Timeline for Can you have a Clarketech artifact that you can replicate but cannot comprehend?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 29, 2020 at 21:33 | comment | added | Solomon Slow | If you give the plans for an electromagnet and a battery to people who are scientifically "enlightened," but technologically naïve, it will be just a matter of time before they are designing and building power stations and polyphase induction motors. Pretty much everything humans knew about electricity and magnetism prior to the era of quanum physics was learned by clever people fooling around with batteries and wires, keeping good notes, taking good measurements, and doing good math. | |
| Nov 29, 2020 at 6:06 | comment | added | Joshua | I heard a story (that I believe) that the Russians didn't know how our CPUs worked, so they copied them right down to the "Made in USA" designation on the die. | |
| Nov 28, 2020 at 7:41 | comment | added | arboviral | Not worth adding this as a separate answer since this is such a good one, but the example that sprang to mind when I saw this question was a compass - very easy to build, not that easy to understand why it works... | |
| Nov 27, 2020 at 21:50 | comment | added | user_1818839 | Re: the battery they would need : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery and sanskritimagazine.com/vedic_science/… suggest (not definitively) those might be available. | |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 17:54 | comment | added | JRE | @user253751: Thanks for the heads up. I fixed the link. | |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 17:53 | history | edited | JRE | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Fixed link |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 17:30 | comment | added | Stack Exchange Broke The Law | Your "cavity magnetron" link is actually about induction motors. | |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 14:45 | comment | added | JRE | @Philipp: According to this, motors were invented slightly before generators, but it was suspected before hand that a motor would work as a generator. | |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 14:38 | comment | added | Philipp | I am not sure if that is just an unconfirmed anecdote, but I read somewhere that the electric generator was actually invented before the electric motor, and that it was discovered that most generators also work as motors when someone accidentally connected one generator to another and the second started spinning when they spun the first. | |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 14:21 | comment | added | Adam Menhennett | Wow, that was a really articulate answer, you explained something complex with a couple of simple analogies - which were also about topics I am ignorant of - and now my overall level of knowledge has increased. Thank you! | |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 13:19 | history | edited | JRE | CC BY-SA 4.0 | edited body |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 12:10 | history | edited | JRE | CC BY-SA 4.0 | added 1 character in body |
| Nov 26, 2020 at 10:55 | history | answered | JRE | CC BY-SA 4.0 |