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Which is faster?


josh817

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While I sit on a corner at the track, waiting for cars to spin off and go flying, I become bothered by a question posed to me a few years ago.

 

1) Suppose you have two computers. One is a standard computer, the other is a computer which is operated hydraulically. All calculations are done via hydraulics. Neglecting actuator speeds, which is faster when running the same computations?

 

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Entrained gasses in fluid compress. 

 

The fact that friction does play a part.

Abacus wielding Chinese beat computers in complex math calculations in recent history. A hydraulic computer would likely be faster than a human processing that abacus...

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Manual typewriter is faster, assuming no typing mistakes.

Ummm.... sorry but until until somebody figures out how to do a hydraulically actuated high res display, the standard computer is going to be faster.  I don't know how to make hydraulics emit light - maybe if you use flammable hydraulic fluid...

 

Also, I didn't read all of the comments but I'm pretty sure that hydraulic pressure waves don't propagate at the speed of light, or anywhere even close to it.

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Ummm.... sorry but until until somebody figures out how to do a hydraulically actuated high res display, the standard computer is going to be faster.  I don't know how to make hydraulics emit light - maybe if you use flammable hydraulic fluid...

 

Also, I didn't read all of the comments but I'm pretty sure that hydraulic pressure waves don't propagate at the speed of light, or anywhere even close to it.

 

Indeed, hence my original comment on the compressibility of fluids.

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The speed of light comment was prodding the flames to get your panties in a wad.

 

 

But, are you trying to say an electron, which has mass, has kinetic energy, and collides with other electrons does not exhibit frictional losses? Conservation of mass and momentum?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drift_velocity

http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2910

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