Nanotech Pinball and Miniature Engines

glenmark writes "Researchers at the Solid State Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed the world's smallest pinball game. The video is fascinating. The flippers are electrostatically-actuated monocrystalline silicon cantilevers. I hope Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie see this. I have a feeling they would get a kick out of it." And in another nanotech story, psmears writes "Three hundred times more powerful than ordinary batteries, but much lighter and smaller? Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid. Further information at Research-TV including photos and a film."

But, geez

That thing sure is sensitive to tilt. A minor gravitational fluctuation sets it off.

This is great news

This is great news! Just the other day, my boss discovered the worlds smallest game of pocket pool. If I bought him one of these pinball machines, he could have his own private arcade.

Umm...

Where is the quarter slot?

Re:Umm...

Sorry, it only takes nano-sized Chuck E. Cheese tokens.

I think the token-machine is out-of-order right now though :(

And the nobel prize goes to...

Solid State Electronics Laboratory for the smallest balls known to exist!

Wow ...

the video compares the size of the MEMS pinball to a Swedish Safetyy match, a .5mm lead and a human hair. The comparison really gives great perspective!

Remember the old days

...when folks used to encode videos using codecs that worked well on any platform?

Some people still do. They call them MPEGS.

Re:Remember the old days

Huh?

It is an MPEG codec. DivX is an implementation of MPEG-4. If you want source code for a decoder see the ffmpeg [sourceforge.net] (as libavcodec) or xvid [xvid.org] codecs. Between then, I've not see an OS with a POSIX layer that's not been able to compile a decoder engine. Granted, there are large bunches of optional parts that the various decoders don't all cover, but I've not yet see any problems with ffmpeg decoder.

If by MPEGS you mean MPEG-1, then yes - that is slightly more portable than MPEG-4 codecs, but not noticably (better support on embeded systems). They do however, have poorer picture quality, and larger bitrates. So, it's not really a good choice for internet distribution. MPEG-2 would also be better than MPEG-1, but it's also not quite as good as MPEG-4, interms of low bitrate quality. And for a web demo, the lower the bitrate, the better.

If you've got a particular platform in mind, then drop a line, and I'll see if I can find a pre-compiled setup for it.

Looks like a matrix arcade - here's the music

"Rows and columns of tiny nano-pinball games" That sounds like I'm hallucinating quite badly.

"Electostatic actuation" - now maybe they could drive the music for it through nano-elctrostatic speakers:

"He's a nano wizard
There's got to be a spin
A nano wizard
S'got monocrystalline"

New Casting Roles

And the Tony goes to:

David Spade; the world's smallest pinball wizard.

Side discussion:

Given that this is just another "Look that we can do now with interesting molecules!" thread, I suggest a side discussion:

Will the Diamond Age begin in our lifetimes?

I'm personally of the opinion that when the nanotech revolution starts, it'll happen so shockingly fast that applications, society and governance will take decades to catch up -- think internet x10.

In a world of pervasive nanotech, I suspect the next really big industry will be power generation; it'll require a step up in juice unlike any seen since the start of the century. Fortunately, nanotech will hopefully solve some technical problems (superconducting power transmission, materials suited to support fusion, etc) at the same time it's demanding this huge level of power generation.

Of course, in a world of pervasive nanotech, our existing governmental and societal structures are in a lot of trouble... We live, as the ancient Chinese said, in interesting times (and I mean that in the spirit in which they did).

Re:Side discussion:

I'll take up part of that discussion.

While nanotechnology has many great potentials, they are still in a hazy future. Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world. Same with Computers. Yet the bulk of the world is still relatively unchanged by either of these. Certainly the developed nations have changed substantially, but in many respects they have not changed much if at all.

I get up in the morning, go to work from 8-5 every weekday morning for 40 hrs a week. Same as my dad did, and same as my kids will. How we do our work has changed, but the simple pattern of society in which we work to earn money to pay for housing, food, et al. has remained unchanged.

In the bulk of the world, life is much closer akin to my grandfolks time. People work from sunrise to sunset to scratch out a living, and their sustenance, from the land. Nano technology is not going to dramatically change their lives. Drought or other climatic changes will be the key variable to their lives.

We do indeed live in interesting times, but I do not think that our time is any more interesting on an individual level than any other time. We live in a time that has seen the average american progress steadily further from the basic compnents of survival. How many average americans would be able to fend for themselves in the "wild?" The "interesting" past of our American lives is when all the artificial walls separating us from basic needs come crashing down.

Nanotechnology then does but attempt to fortify those walls and afford us protection from our fear of being without. Earlier times had the same fear, the difference being that they lived closer to their fear than we do.

Lasers

"Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world."

And they were right - they did. Not then, and not in the laser death ray way they thought back then, but now. I read a compelling article a while back (probably here) that proposed that the tech boom of the 90's was not the result of computer, the Internet or anything else. It was about lasers becomming cheap enough to be put in everything. Lasers are in millions of things. We don't even think about them - CD, DVD, fibre networks, SP/DIF..etc.

The transformations don't happen until the price point comes down. Nanotech is more like the way people think about the Internet - it starts inexspensivley from the get go (wouldn't have without those cheap lasers though). Once the first practical molecular assemblers are created (assuming they can be) it will boom very very quickly.

Re:Side discussion:

Lets separate what real nanotech offers from what nanotech does in SF stories.

Firstly, look at some of the stories set now, written 50 years ago. How many of them have an even part way accurate description of, well, anything?

So, when your talking about nanotech, what are you actually thinking of?

What I'm thinking of is something that will be a bit like a cross between mechanical engineering and chemistry - make the various mechanical parts small so that they tend to operate in a chemicaly relevent length scale. That's the sort of thing that these micro-engines are.

Think about biology for a moment, and about the sorts of biochemical reactions that go on in a living being. Those are the sort of things that nanotach can do. I do not believe that we will see a "Universal constructor" type device for many centuries, if ever.

Note that the two examples that you give have been solved without the use of nano tech. Superconducting powerlines are in use in europe. They are unfortunatly only cost effective for short range (around 100 miles or so) high power transfers - but that's improving.
The problem with fusion is not materials. You cannot get a material that will contain a fusion reaction - instead they use magnetic containment. And the problem is keeping the thing stable. I cannot see how nanotech devices would assist in this.

So, in sumary, you are thinking of the effects of something, but I've no idea what.

Re:Side discussion:

A friend and I were having a discussion about this a few months ago. We both love "technology", but I think I tend to overboard on the side of seeing it as the tool withi which all problems can be solved. My friend has a more cautious view. He suggested that eventually there will be a time when this stuff will probably result in many problems:

-War (over who should use it and how it should be used.)
-New nanotech based "diseases" caused by their proliferation
-Political and ethical issues that no one can even dream of right now

The usual stuff to be sure, but nonetheless the kind of thing that someone like me would never think about. I think you are correct in your assertion that society and governance will have trouble catching up. They are already having trouble with the Internet alone. (Think spam regulation)

On another subtopic: I think that nanotech in it's current form is very much akin to the early days of computing when the first nixie tubes were being used as a display device. They displayed information in a very rudimentary fashion that still required human intervention to be interpreted to the common man.

What I think will be interesting in the future of nanotech is when we can manipulate matter as we do pixels in today's 3d rendering engines. Think of it as rendering reality... with filters... and the ability to manipulate textures... colors... etc.

I would suggest that all the algorithms we've been developing for 3D rendering will be the very fundamentals of matter manipulation software. Of course there are many other factors that we currently ignore in 3D that will be essential to real matter. (Don't want hollow object for one thing)

Just imagine the possibility of applying encryption and compression algorithms on matter. :) You store the data model of your physical object and you discard the portions of the model that are repetitious.

From the technical angle, it's going to be a lot of fun. From the societal angle it's going to be very tumultuous.

Personally, I think that eventually waste dumps are going to become goldmines for discarded matter to use in the manufacturing of new materials. If I were interested in making money long term, I'd probably buy a few garbage dumps now and keep them in the family.

The beginning of the end

Now nano sized soldiers will have equipment to perfect their hand eye coordination before they launch their attack on mankind.

It's all good science until ...

someone lights there ear on fire answering the cell phone.

Re:It's all good science until ...

I hate to break it to the mod's, but this is not offtopic. In fact, it's quite funny.

See, the micro-engine charges the cellphones. Combustion + ear = ear on fire. That was his joke. Even if you thought it unfunny, it was on-topic.

Posted with a bonus in hopes that someone will see this.

Lighter fluid

Specifically, I was commenting on the fact that the micro-engine uses lighter fluid to charge the cellphone. I feel uncomfortable enough putting a cellphone up to my ear under normal circumstances. I'd feel quite a bit more apprehensive if I'd just loaded it up with lighter fluid.

Oh, and thank you for noting.

Micro-engines in cell phones?

You are so going to be turning off your cell phone at the gas station now!

Researchtv needs to research site development

When I tried to watch the film, I got this javascript "error":

There seems to be a problem with your system. Browser not Microsoft Internet Explorer

That's a problem?

We'll find WMD's in Iraq as soon as we plant them there.

Way To Be Flaming...

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid.

...and in other news, police have been unable to determine the cause of a few hundred homicides in the area. However, they suspect a cult following due to the strange nature of the burns on the victims' left or right ears. More tonight at 11. Now over to you with the weather, Dave...

Mini and Micro Rotary Engines

Berkeley [berkeley.edu] has been working on mini and micro rotary engines for a little while now. Rotaries are really better for this application as they have less moving parts. Their mini rotary engine [berkeley.edu] is about the size of a penny while their micro rotary engine [berkeley.edu] has a rotor of size 1mm! Rotaries have no valves which makes them much easier to produce at this size.

Re:naming

Or how about when nanotech gets smaller then 1nm, are we going to have to the change that name too?

Given that atoms are on the order of 0.1 to 0.3 nm and given the strong limitations imposed by nuclear physics (particularly the strong force), I don't think there is much risk.

For the Micro Fallingwater Game Room

This would be great for furnishing the game room of the one-millionth scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater [berkeley.edu]

My two cents

I didn't link to anything about the recent University of Birmingham press release in the column [dansdata.com] I put up the other day about fuel cells and related technologies. The reason why I didn't is that their press release doesn't make a lot of sense, and there's nothing more substantial on their site [bham.ac.uk] or in the video [research-tv.com]. This piece [icnetwork.co.uk] is better, but not much better, at least for the microengine-instead-of-battery applications to which people keep saying their developments apply.

"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery" is meaningless. If they mean total energy delivery over whatever time period you like, then microengines can beat batteries by a factor of a million trillion zillion, as long as you hook them up to a big enough fuel tank. In actual power capacity, though, microengines aren't anything special at all, yet.

The aim is little turbines the size of a sugar cube that run from butane or propane or whatever, and have several watts of output power; prototypes of such things have been spinning for a while now. The microengines shown in the U of B release, though, are minuscule piston units which have power output in the microwatts, if that. Heck, the ones shown in the release don't even have generators attached to them, so their electrical output at the moment is zero!

For your amusement: A reader also pointed this [indiatimes.com] out to me; it's a reprint of a piece on the subject from the British "Sun" tabloid, and it reads as if they took the U of B press release and put it through a Markov chain [san-francisco.ca.us] program, or something.

It's good to know that alcoholism in the press is alive and well.

Nanoscale...

And a new record for the fastest slashdotting of a University website... Insert obligatory joke about Nanoseconds here.

300 times more energy than an ordinary battery...?

"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery and are much lighter and smaller."

So a cellphone that needs a daily charging will now need a refill once a year?

I would wager that this claim carries a degree of exaggeration.

Mirror for the movies?

C'mon people... you know the drill... anyone got one?

New title for worlds smallest webserver

They must be running their website using the pinball machine too. I hope that they can keep all of those .'s from /. in play or their server will tilt.

exploding cell-phones anyone?

have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid.

Great. Now I can add my laptop and cell phone, along with nail clippers and wooden slupting tools, to list the of things you can be detained Airport Security guards can pull me out of line and strip search me down for...

on the other hand I wonder what MacGuyver could do with one of these, a pack of toothpicks and some loose sweater yarn...

I'm a Pinball... I mean Unix Wizard

I've been saving this up for a moment like this:

Ever since I heard of Unix
I've always had a ball,
From Berkeley up to Linux
I must've run 'em all;
But I ain't seen nothing like him
On systems large or small
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!

He sits just like a statue,
Like part of the machine,
Feeling all the limits,
Knows what signals mean,
Hacks by intuition,
His process never stalls,
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!

He's a Unix Wizard,
I just can't get the gist
A Unix wizard's
Got such a mental twist.

How do you think he does it?
I don't know!
What makes him so good?

Ain't got no distractions,
Don't hear no biffs or bells,
Don't see no lights a flashin'
Ignores his sense of smell,
Patches running kernels
Dumps no core at all,
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!

I thought I was
The process table king,
But I've just handed
My root password to him.

Even on my own hot boxes,
His hacks can beat my best.
The network leads him in,
And he just does the rest.
He's got crazy Finger servers
Never will seg-fault...
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!

new version of song needed...

He's a nano-pinball nano-wizard...

(Sounds like Mork from Ork joke eh?)

Steam engine???

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid AND power their computers with STEAM!!!

Who would play tiny pinball?

Puny humans!

In other news: Nano-guitars!

Check out this rocking piece [oddmusic.com] of nanotech.

lighter fluid = fumes?

Besides the seeming flammability risk, what about fumes?

No flammables on aircraft

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid.

Unfortunately, you can't take flammable liquids like lighter fluid aboard aircraft, so it isn't going to help much on those long flights unless they change the regs. I don't see that hapening in the current security climate.

Video Mirror

Here is a mirror of the video if you want to check it out:

pinball_720x540_(divx).avi [btrig.com]

NanoTech Engines

About a year ago, Popular Science did an article on nanotech motors. They said that the biggest drawback of even the best Li-batteries is that no battery has even hit the 1% efficiency rating. Reasearchers hope that with these mini-engines, we may finally see power devices as small as a battery that can produce over 1% efficiency. I believe that 10% is their ultimate goal, although anything over 1% would still be worlds better than batteries. Granted, use in such devices as portable phones would actually mean that the micro engines would just be recharging the batteries, which would limit the overall efficiency to less than a 10th of a percent, but given other applications and better technology, such nano engines could replace Li-batteries in laptops and other high performance appliances. No more plugging your laptop into the wall, just go to the gas station and filler up ;) .

torrent

somebody post a torrent of the video as a reply; mod whoever's post is a torrent up and mine down

Game Over.

It's slashtilted...

Nanotech Engine... still vapourware

(and this story was on the Reg two days ago...)

The nanotech engine looks very far from production ready - two or three unclear images, and an interview, that's it. The video is mainly marketing for Birmingham Uni, AFAICS, and almost entirely void of technical details or facts.

I'll be impressed when I see a prototype actually working, or any kind of technical detail. This looks nothing more than an artist's impression and some smoke designed to drive funding.

There is also a very big hole in the design argument. Engines, OK. But engines do not produce electricity. They have to drive a generator. That is not 100% efficient. So, please, how is a nanoengine going to be more efficient than something like a fuel cell, which converts hydrocarbons into electricity directly?

Not particularly impressed.

Aaww, that ain't so small

Why my cousin Jake, he's got him a pinball machine thats at least half that size. And his has sound effects.

Slashdot should run a BitTorrent tracker

BitTorrent seems like a great solution to deal with the Slashdot effect, if the editors ever showed any signs of caring about dealing with it.

I can't see the pinball!

Tim

Numbers Please!!!

The article [bham.ac.uk] about the micro engine was frustrating. "300 times more eneergy". Bah! 300 times more energy than a watch battery or a car battery? Obviously, they mean power but how much power? 300 times x? What's x?

Also, since this thing consumes fuel, it might be helpful to compare power-to-weight ratios with the smallest gas engines widely available (e.g., model airplane engines).

Thanks a lot, U Birmingham, for dumbing the article so far down that all it conveys is "oooohhh look, neat new thing".

Not NANO, not even MICRO, just very small...

The microengine are very small (thumbnail) sized combustion engines that drive a generator.

I believe the 300x figure would be for electricity generated in a cubic inch... Though the article seems to actually trying to state that it would be based on cost, that the energy requirement for making the battery far exceeds the amount of electricity that comes out of the battery over it's entire life.

So that these little engines would be very cheap to manufacture. And I need a little assurance that these aren't locally potentially pretty bad (exhaust, explosition, leakage, etc....)

Physicsweb link

Once again, the story has been posted on physicsweb [physicsweb.org] two days ago.

Video mirror

I managed to snag a copy of the video; it's at http://lasthome.net/pinball_720x540_(divx).avi

I look at this and think only one thing...

HOLY

FUCKING

SHIT.

I Love Pinball = i am an Analog dork

There's nothing better than the rush of a multiball or an extra ball, or a freegame. And the two guys mentioned in the leed-in to the article are geniuses. I love Monopoly. There is a new "the Simpson's" pinball game out that is mind boglingling fun. The quotes in it are sweet-assed.

besides that there is only one game that's better, Twilight Zone, because it had "the Power Ball" in it.

Oh and the Episode 1 Starwars game because you get to knock the fuck out of Jar Jar with the steelie in order to advance to fight Darth Maul in a multiball death match

sterling engines

...so how long before we get micro sterling engines to power our notebooks off of the heat from their own processors? hmmm...

Lighter fluid: combustion byproducts?

I know that standard batteries generally have a small amount of outgassing, but what sort of combustion byproducts are we talking about with this lighter-fluid-based "battery"?

The article is very light on the technical details of how lighter fluid will generate the energy, other than that the device be "a few millimetres wide". But the MSDS for Ronsonol Lighter Fluid [k12.ok.us] goes into quite a bit of detail:

* 95% Light Aliphatic Naptha

* 5% Medium Aliphatic Naptha

* <30ppm Benzene

* Hazardous Decomp Products: Carbon Monixides & unidentified organic compounds may be formed during combustion.

And here's the biggie:

* EXTINGUISH PILOT LIGHT/CIGARETTES & TURN OFF OTHER SOURCES OF IGNITION PRIOR TO USE

Does that mean no more drivers lighting up while talking on their cell phone while driving 45mph in the fast lane? Or can I just look forward to their eventual combustion?

Great.

What a spectacular use of time and money! I can think of no better way to showcase the capabilities of MEMS than with a fucking game. This is sure to elimate all the worlds problems. These scientists should get a nobel prize for making great use of their time in the lab. I'm sure their wives and children are proud of them. I once read an article on a MEMS device that could help make fiber optics accessible to almost anyone for cheap. Who in the hell needs useless stuff like that? Give us a nanotech foosball table, and science can stop right there, as far as I'm concerned.

mirror, incase it gets slashdotted

Here is a mirror of the movie in case it gets slashdotted. http://brain.cx/pinball.avi [brain.cx]

Re:nanotech

That's assuming he ever gets laid :p

Re:No video

I really wanted to see the video but, the site requires Windows or MAc with Internet Explorer, cookies enabled and Windows Media Player.

I must've been imagining things when I went there with Mozilla and copied the URL for the video into FlashGet for downloading. (I wasn't prompted about any cookie, either...first-party cookies prompt for saving, while third-party cookies are rejected.) I also must've been imagining things when I played it in Media Player Classic (not Windows Media Player)...had to download and install ffdshow first, but everything worked fine without IE or WMP. If you're going to troll, it's a good idea to have at least a small part of your troll based in fact.