http://www.xkcd.com/730/

Possibly the most alarming part of this whole thing is the number of 
forum users who have managed to compute the actual resistance of the 
tangle of resistors near the middle.

Still, you could spent a long, long time digging out all the obscure 
jokes in this thing. (E.g., "may use an actual sandal instead".) 
Somebody has far, far too much tree time...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> Possibly the most alarming part of this whole thing is the number of 
> forum users who have managed to compute the actual resistance of the 
> tangle of resistors near the middle.

And then somebody had to mention this...

http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

Post a reply to this message

On 21/04/2010 10:12 AM, Invisible wrote:
> http://www.xkcd.com/730/
>
> Possibly the most alarming part of this whole thing is the number of
> forum users who have managed to compute the actual resistance of the
> tangle of resistors near the middle.
>
> Still, you could spent a long, long time digging out all the obscure
> jokes in this thing. (E.g., "may use an actual sandal instead".)
> Somebody has far, far too much tree time...

That reminds me of a circuit diagram, I saw about 40 years ago, for a 
WOM (Write Only Memory.)


-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Stephen wrote:

> That reminds me of a circuit diagram, I saw about 40 years ago, for a 
> WOM (Write Only Memory.)

...and that's the *other* worrying thing.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:

> And then somebody had to mention this...
> 
> http://catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

And if you browse around, you find this:

http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

Whether this is genius or stupidity depends on your point of view...

Post a reply to this message

On 4/21/2010 4:12 AM, Invisible wrote:
> Possibly the most alarming part of this whole thing is the number of
> forum users who have managed to compute the actual resistance of the
> tangle of resistors near the middle.

The resistor blob reminds me of this:

http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-thevenin.html :D

-- 
~Mike

Post a reply to this message

Mike Raiford wrote:

> The resistor blob reminds me of this:
> 
> http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-thevenin.html :D

Impressive...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

> Possibly the most alarming part of this whole thing is the number of forum 
> users who have managed to compute the actual resistance of the tangle of 
> resistors near the middle.

V = I * R for each resistor
and
Sum(current into a node) = 0

Solve.

There's probably a matrix method for doing it, where you get to invert a big 
matrix, rather than solving all the simultaneous equations by hand.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>> Possibly the most alarming part of this whole thing is the number of 
>> forum users who have managed to compute the actual resistance of the 
>> tangle of resistors near the middle.
> 
> V = I * R for each resistor
> and
> Sum(current into a node) = 0
> 
> Solve.
> 
> There's probably a matrix method for doing it, where you get to invert a 
> big matrix, rather than solving all the simultaneous equations by hand.

Sure. But the drawing isn't exactly ledgible, and there's a hell of a 
lot of resistors in there...

(This probably explains why every single poster got a different answer.)

Post a reply to this message

> Sure. But the drawing isn't exactly ledgible, and there's a hell of a lot 
> of resistors in there...

I took a screen shot and zoomed it up 400%, the connections are quite clear.

> (This probably explains why every single poster got a different answer.)

I got 0.625 ohm by building a Ybus matrix (basically tells you the 
conductance between each pair of nodes) and inverting it.

Post a reply to this message