Someone mentioned earlier a linear relationship - though I'm not certain in which context. Does this type of relationship exist between resistance, distance, DC current, and a uniform medium? I've seen models of current diverging and converging at their sources - and I imagined that this had something to do with resistance. However, nothing to me suggested an obvious linear relationship.

At this point, I am reminded of all of the posts to this thread that criticized me for being motivated to receive attention. Now that I think more about it, perhaps they are right. I could just a easily have looked up this answer myself. But then, what is the purpose of this site - a place where people can turn when they have not found their answers in texts and offer their advanced knowledge? If that is the case, I may have been misusing this sight. However, I am still inclined to think of this site as a place where people can communicate ideas about electricity that does not have to be limited to specialized knowledge at any level.

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She 'tis not there.

 

You're thinking about it too much. THe basics of waves remain the same, regardless of what they are physically in the same way an oscillating RC circuit behaves similar to a vibrating spring and mass.

BTW, it's not electron repulsion that makes current flow. It's more to do with an electric field applying a force on the electrons.

You are not these people. I can tell by some of the questions you are asking. If you did reading we would be explaining concepts to you, not walking through trivial details step-by-step. There's a difference between helping and teaching and both still require you to do your own thinking. Teaching quickly gets cumbersome on a forum, but not even that is happening here. What is happening is spoonfeeding- that's where you get an answer and take it exactly as is without attempting to expand on it in your OWN head.

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Tanaka Sensei (avatar) says: Please spell it "ridiculous" correctly! Not "rediculous". ^^

 

Liquid crystals don't actually react to light that way. It's truly a mechanical thing. The crystal is a polarizing filter. It physically twists under the influence of a voltage (piezoelectric effect) and, in doing so, changes its plane of polarization. The LCD display, incorporates a fixed, polarizing filter (at least in simpler displays) and the effect is the same as rotating two polarizing filters, one in front of the other. When the planes of polarization are the same, maximum light passes and when they are normal to each other, minimum light passes.

What you are referring to sounds more like the action found in self-darkening glasses that darken in the sun and then lighten up again in the shade. You;ll have to get another view on that action as I'm absolutely ignorant of how it works. But, I would be interested to see what others may write about it.

It may be nit picking but, isn't, "spectroscopy" the study of the different frequencies (wavelengths) of light and I suppose any other things that could be thought of as having a measurable "spectrum"?

 

You may be referring to something like the way some people model operational amplifiers. I personally prefer to work out such circuits as voltage dividers but, a lot of people prefer to think of them in terms of current flowing into and out of nodes around the circuit.

Since the differential inputs respond to voltage differences and the output is usually a signal voltage that drives some current into a load, I've always felt that using the current model adds another step or layer to the solution. I'm sure there are some (perhaps many) that would rather violently disagree with me on this.

 

I wasn't suggesting that you buy a tablet and modify it, I meant you should read about how they work and consider using those methods. They wouldn't be used if they weren't cost effective. You could actually get a busted one and use the parts from it, but I just meant to imitate the methods. The most common kind uses a grid of wires, and the pen has a magnet, as you may know when you move a magnet over a wire a current is induced. You can't get a piece to a location without moving it. Then you just detect like battle ship, if wire C and wire 5 had current induced then a piece moved over grid space C5. For the optical glyph tracking code, theres a lot of user created stuff out there, but what I looked at was a C++ 6.0 library. I don't recall the name but I found it pretty easily with a Google search, and if you want another format you can probably find it.

 

Well, this does bring up a question (at least in my mind) of just what sort of "help" you are trying to get from it.

I wasn't going to mention this earlier but, I noticed fairly early on in this thread that you seem to have some lore of knowledge about different...how should I say...conceptual things but, no apparent desire to have them explained in detail. It all kept (keeps) leading back to the high-level conceptual stuff.

So, I'll just ask, point blank. Are we really pretty much "spinning our wheels" by trying to come up with practical info and scenarios based on fairly basic electrical and electronic theory and practice? The nuts 'n bolts of it, you might say.

 

I can understand why it might not be appropriate to compare waves at a site whose focus is electronics. I have thought some about water waves and may take a risk of bringing them up later. I've been trying to understand the generation of AC from its source at a turbine. This might involve me looking for a thread that was specifically about AC. However, I haven't given up on using AC in the game. I'm not sure how many times a generator could reverse the direction of current per revolution of the turbine. However, would the electron flow be becoming more dense before the completion of a half rotation of the turbine if the number was twice? Or, is the spacing of the moving electons pretty much uniform in wide wires - and it is the electrons speeding up and slowind down that determines the cycle of AC? I had - and probably still do have, a lot of misconceptions about AC. However, if it is only during the maximum and minimum current flow - during the top and the bottom of the AC cycles, that the speed of electricity is near that of light, is it accurate that between these times the speed is zero? If so, would it be feasible to either increase the wavelength - to a distance of twice or more than the length of the game board, and decrease the amplitude of the wave enough so that changes in the speed of the electrons are slow enough so that they could be measured between points on the game board as an indicator of distance? Or would the speed of the electrons in this situation be too erratic?

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She 'tis not there.

 

We may be talking about differnt things. I was not talking about LCD or glasses, though I wouldn't have wanted to discourage you from making those interesting comments. Its been a while since I learned about spectroscopy, so it may be a good idea to look for a confirmation of anything that I write. Spectroscopy is, I think, the study of light and frequencies. I think - but am not certain, that for each wavelength or group of wavelength that are controlled to pass through a substance, a resulting map of the effects of the substance on these wavelengths is used as an indicator of what the substance is. These maps are characterstics of the structure of component parts of substances. However, I'm not sure if this technique would work for the type of sheet that I am looking for because - though I have very little experience, I am not familiar with any experiments that invovled a type of metal that I can imagine being ground up for the type of test preparation that I am familiar with. However, results and interpretations of experiments or tests that involve bombarding the types of materials that may be useful for me to use as a sheet in the game in different ways - with different types of particles - radiation perhaps, might be useful to learn about for the purpose of the game board. How these particles react to the board might somehow be indicative of the resistance of the board to electricity.

I should probably get back to what you said in an earlier post about LEDs. One thing that occurred to me while I was thinking about workable materials is that if there is a specific resistance that I am looking for then it is probably associated with an amount energy that has to be transformed into heat, light, or something else. I thought about heat producing products that might offer resistances that I am looking for. The parts of an LED - that you mentioned, was the second thing that I considered that might convert energy into light via resistance - after a light bulb. However, I don't know if I have the knowledge or tools to readily use these materials. For example, I can't imagine myself building a sheet out of LED material. Do you have any ideas? There was a laminate that was mentioned that converted electricity into heat - maybe the type used as a defroster on windshields. However, I haven't researched the laminate because I was sceptical - perhaps incorrectly, abount how evenly the sheet had to be applied - if it had to be applied in liquid form, in order to get consistent levels of resistance per unit distance on the surface of the game. I am still looking for a premade sheet - though I may have to make my own. Shims are appealing, but I have found that some of them are made to be electrically resistant because they are building materials. Maybe a database about the heat or light released per distance and units of electricity might be useful. Earlier I was thinking that a useful database might include electon orbital information. However, heat and light might be easier for me to interpret in terms of resistance - than orbitals. I wonder if the spacing of the molecules has something to do with resistance to light or heat ratios - in addition to orbital information. For example, as I am looking for levels of resistance that are measurable with inexpensive equipment, would the heat or light - or changes in the amount of heat or light that vary with resistance, have to be perceptable? I really don't want my game board to be a heater or a light, but it may have to be. What else besides heat and light could resistance convert electricity into - if I am saying that correctly. Is there some type of solid flat material that on a very small imperceivable level turns resistance into chemical movement - and not so much heat or light? Though this is not only what I am looking for, what would be invovled?

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She 'tis not there.

 

I can't think of how an amplifier would utilze a sheet that has particular resistive properties. I was under the impression that when electricity was introduced to a sheet, the electrons might not only travel in a direction that completes the circuit but also deviate as a result of resistance. Though I may be wrong, I did not intuit the resistance offered by the material to be measurable in linear terms as the distance between continuous locations on the material where the circuit was connected was changed - because if I was interpreting the model of a flat material correcly the paths seemed to curve outward. I don't understand how the workings of amplifiers might relate to the workings of a device used to electronically identify locations.

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She 'tis not there.

 

You forgot to mention easy to assemble and cheap.

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Bill
Smart Kits build Smart People
http://www.blueroomelectronics.com/

 

I didn't think of modifying the game in such a way that required the pieces to maintain contact - by staying in one place or by being drug, to a surface to keep track of location information. This would be a possibility. I did come across a model that was able to keep track of multiple locations at once. I supposed that the moved piece could be identified by elimination in the program because it was not any of the stationary pieces. The game is not sophisticated enough at this time to require data lost - due to the game being bumped, to be recovered. This could be useful, but I was not thinking of any other output of the game information besides the game pieces themselves to communicate data to a user - and this information would be about status and not locations. I didn't look for a used model because I couldn't imagine one having dimensions larger than a sheet of paper - and I would like for the game surface to be between one and half - and two feet, square. Also, there is still the issue of communicating electronic information to the pieces to be displayed. As far as I know these pads are used only as input and not output devices. If anyone knows differently, please tell me - because I am not prioritizing researching these pads. I suppose the type of interactive part that I am looking for might be found in a preexisting game. However, there are so many computer games on the market that are not classified by parts that I can't imagine a productive way to start searching for one of these games to use. One reason why some of the models are cost effective might because they are produced in high volume and also have a different functionality - as far as I know.

Though it may be off subject, if anyone knows what types of abstract data types pattern recognition programs use, I would be interested. I imagine that arrays might be used - that store visual information related to the charactristics associated with the data acquisition mechanism, the shape of a screen, and/or color. However, in pattern recognition I suppose that a lot of information may not be necessary to store and maintain for representation purposes - and this might make another type of data structure useful.

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She 'tis not there.

 

Right now I am interested in relationships between resistance, the structure of materials, the distance between locations on these materials where connections to an electrical source is made, and how multiple connections might effect this relationship. I am also interested in specific materials that may be on the market in the form of sheets having these structures. I am also interested if somehow between the times when current has the greatest absolute value in AC if current can be made to travel slow enough by decreasing the amplitude and increasing the wavelength of waves so as to result in an electron movement that can be measured without sensitive equipment. I also expressed interest in other things - including the forces that culminate in water waves.

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She 'tis not there.

 

That's true. However, I would not want to discourage someone from mentioning something that I might consider to be more easy to assemble and cheap than they did - so that a discrepency in classifications might detract from this thread. I would also not want to discourage anyone from mentioning something that was interesting on account of its cost or assembly - for the purpose of hearing what the person had to say and not excluding information that may have a value in and of itself or as a result of publication.

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She 'tis not there.

 

I think that it is good to encourage people to do research. However, if you find that people are not catching on to what you are saying as quickly as you would like them to - or are at a different level than they are, I would consider either pointing out to them the difficulty of the subject matter - if you are absolutely certain that the information can not be described in any way in a more simplified form, accommodate your responses more, find a more encouraging way to suggest researching - some of your links were very helpful in this respect, or not reply to the posts. There are probably other options. There are many people who might have otherwise found interesting content in these posts - but did not do so because they were influenced or overwhelmed by negative comments. I hope that you take this comment constructively, because from what I can see you have a lot to offer. The fact that you come accross as an authority in electronics does not decrease the effects that your posts may have on people. Also, perhaps I have not reviewed your posts as much as I could have for specific examples of how I could better confirm to the expectations of this site. I haven't found any of your generalizations informative in this respect, however.

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She 'tis not there.

 

I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. I really did. Bbut, you're back to going in circles again. Asking questions, in seeming great detail (that have virtually no detailed at all) and that you know can't be answered.

Okay, so I tipped my hand and you responded by coming up with a different "next step". Time to pull the plug on this one, I think. But, thanks for the lesson.