Book on the 'Theory of Machines and Mechanisms' for the serious student

Time to take your engineering knowledge up a notch? Check out this book I discovered on Amazon the other day. For the non-professional engineer it may be a little weighty, but boy...it's all there! (This fourth edition is aimed at senior undergraduate or graduate students in mechanical engineering.)

Theory of Machines and Mechanisms covers the study of displacements, velocities, accelerations, and static and dynamic forces required for the proper design of mechanical linkages, cams, and geared systems. The authors present the background, notation, and nomenclature essential for students to understand the various independent technical approaches that exist in the field of mechanisms, kinematics, and dynamics.

The book includes a CD with working model animations of many figures from the text to help students visualize and comprehend their movement. A companion website for instructors provides additional information and resources, including PowerPoint-based slides of figures from the text.

Here is where you can get Theory of Machines and Mechanisms

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Mechanical universal Turing machine uses ball bearings for memory

This charming contraption is described a "mechanical universal Turing machine". According the all-knowing Wikipedia:

A Turing machine is a hypothetical device that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite its simplicity, a Turing machine can be adapted to simulate the logic of any computer algorithm, and is particularly useful in explaining the functions of a CPU inside a computer.

Here is a presentation by the maker, Jim MacArthur, describing the background of the machine. I gather the catch with this machine is that you have to assume that the length of track is infinite.

The machine was made mostly out of scrap metal and wood. The components include magnets, springs, cams and levers. It uses ball bearings as its memory. No electrical components were used, other than one small motor used to drive it.

[ Thanks Christoph! ]

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Exploration of The Uncanny as it relates to automata and robots

The Uncanny - the subject of an e-zine issue of the Pea Green Boat magazine, features an interview with The House of Automata and an unpretentious exploration of what The Uncanny is all about.

For some background on the concept of The Uncanny, let's turn to Wikipedia:

The Uncanny (Ger. Das Unheimliche - "the opposite of what is familiar") is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar.

Because the uncanny is familiar, yet strange, it often creates cognitive dissonance within the experiencing subject due to the paradoxical nature of being attracted to, yet repulsed by an object at the same time. This cognitive dissonance often leads to an outright rejection of the object, as one would rather reject than rationalize.

Here is where you can download the Pea Green Boat issue exploring The Uncanny as a pdf.

[ Thanks Michael! ]

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