Nikola Tesla invention from 100 years ago suddenly makes more sense today

Post by sbmthakur » Thu, May 20, 2021, 12:38 PM UTC

neither_color wrote: post #8

If you want to get into the mind of Tesla a bit I highly recommend "My Inventions", his sort of autobiography where he described how his mind worked. He spent a lot of time developing his imagination at a young age and "traveling" in his head. I was surprised to read that he would visualize entire designs in his imagination and then go through prototypes and iterations several times before bringing that idea into the…

Post by throw1234651234 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 1:05 PM UTC

danybittel wrote: post #26

mrtnmcc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't everyone do this? I remember at the age of five finally learning to control my falling dreams at night, to be able to freeze in the air and eventually fly (the Matrix scene definitely resonated later). This was the beginning of a continuous exercise of imagining things more and more exactly and controlling that imagination. Now as an engineer, I spend most of my time staring at a wall simulating and refining…

You may be exceptional. In my experience, it often works / looks perfect in the head. But putting it to paper, it falls apart quickly. Imagine a bicycle, it is easy to imagine it accurately. Then draw it (or construct it), one usually struggles a lot. The step to materialize it, is where you need a lot of practice. The worst are the the "idea" guys. They think they have already done all the work, and somebody else ju…

Post by aidenn0 » Thu, May 20, 2021, 1:30 PM UTC

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #31

danybittel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be exceptional. In my experience, it often works / looks perfect in the head. But putting it to paper, it falls apart quickly. Imagine a bicycle, it is easy to imagine it accurately. Then draw it (or construct it), one usually struggles a lot. The step to materialize it, is where you need a lot of practice. The worst are the the "idea" guys. They think they have already done all the work, and somebody else ju…

I imagine it will vary widely depending on the complexity of something. The more complex something is the more likely you fail to predict some things accurately, so based on this conversation it's difficult to tell whether someone is exceptional or not, as exceptional would be when you are able to do more complex designs accurately than most other folks.

Post by angrysaki » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

danybittel wrote: post #26

mrtnmcc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't everyone do this? I remember at the age of five finally learning to control my falling dreams at night, to be able to freeze in the air and eventually fly (the Matrix scene definitely resonated later). This was the beginning of a continuous exercise of imagining things more and more exactly and controlling that imagination. Now as an engineer, I spend most of my time staring at a wall simulating and refining…

You may be exceptional. In my experience, it often works / looks perfect in the head. But putting it to paper, it falls apart quickly. Imagine a bicycle, it is easy to imagine it accurately. Then draw it (or construct it), one usually struggles a lot. The step to materialize it, is where you need a lot of practice. The worst are the the "idea" guys. They think they have already done all the work, and somebody else ju…

Post by jecel » Thu, May 20, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

graderjs wrote: post #18

Because this offers different obstruction levels to different rates of flow and because it works in one direction could it somehow be used to create a version that could operate like Maxwell's demon with particles with a certain temperature rather than a fluid? Temperature being a mscroscopic measure of the microscopic velocities of particles.