Stanford Researchers Create A Water Computer
Researchers at Stanford University have built a computer that runs on water.
Manu Prakash and his team developed the computer in which presence or absence fo water droplets constitutes bits. The computer functions when magnetized water droplets move through a maze like structure, clocked by a magnetic field. Prakash says the objective is not to reinvent today's computer but to manipulate matter itself.
"We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this. Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed but physical matter is algorithmically manipulated as well. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale," he said.
The computer consists of an array of tiny iron bars which are sandwiched between glass slabs with a layer of oil above. A rotating magnetic field acts as the clock. Every reversal of polarity is a cycle. When water droplets are injected into the array they move in predetermined motion.
In the paper detailed in the journal Nature Physics, researchers detailed the use of computer for Boolean arithmetic.
"Following these rules, we've demonstrated that we can make all the universal logic gates used in electronics, simply by changing the layout of the bars on the chip," said Katsikis. "The actual design space in our platform is incredibly rich. Give us any Boolean logic circuit in the world, and we can build it with these little magnetic droplets moving around," Georgios Katsikis, a graduate student at the Prakash Lab.
