[GreenKeys] Was: TWX/TELEX now: Analog Computers

[John]

  You might be very interested in exploring "Analog Computers". I've 
owned several, large and small.  They use known standardized components 
and voltage values to compute, and simulate, systems that vary over time.

There is a niche for them yet today, even though the speed of even 
simple/cheap modern computers is now sufficient to model most things. 
Many industrial control system courses still have them in the labs.

However - if you have a grasp of the mathematics of what you are 
investigating (and it's a 'physical' system, like a weight on a spring 
in a viscous medium) it's trivial to "program" an analog computer to 
model that system, sometimes in real-time, and to make changes to system 
parameters (the mass of the weight for example) and have the results 
directly available, with no need to translate the model into some 
high-level language on a digital machine.

A lot of large-scale flight simulators used large analog computers to 
drive them.

Google "analog computer" to a deluge of info.

For a reasonably useful simulation and modeling program, see "Flowstone"

For the best open-source (free) modeling and simulation package out 
there, see "SciLab".


Obligatory Greenkeys: 
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYFIGSBELLTRSCRLFCRLF

okay I feel better now.


Cheerz

John KB6SCO

Carson City

On 4/15/2021 4:00 PM, steve bennett via GreenKeys wrote:
> In my first electronics class in vocational school the teacher gave us 
> some analogy to explain a resistor.
> A light bulb went off in my head and I added my own analogy for 
> capacitor and inductor.
> Teacher stopped me "not so fast son...you are taking it too far"
>
> It wasn't until years later when I enrolled in electrical engineering 
> I learned I was right all along and the vo-tech
> teacher didn't know what he was talking about.
> The math that describes the behavior of a capacitor is the exact same 
> math that describes the behavior of a mechanical spring and the math 
> that describes the behavior of an inductor is exactly the same math 
> that describes mechanical inertia.
>
> -Steve
>
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