Wow, these students are trying to build a computer completely out of K’NEX parts, here’s a calculator…
The K’NEX calculator stands over 10 feet tall, and can perform 4 bit addition and subtraction operations in about 30 seconds. The slowest part of the operation is the user entering the balls. From there the balls trickle down, computing the result of the operation, and then sending that through a 4 bit decoder, which flips a flag that tells the user the answer. Since it is 4 bit, we can add and subtract numbers from 0 to 15.
The K’NEX computer – Link.
6 thoughts on “The K’NEX computer”
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was the double on purpose?
it was so good it needed to be posted twice :)
MIT students did this a long time ago with Tinker Toys, although their computer only plays tic-tac-toe. You can see some not great pictures of it here:
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=77118799%40N00&q=tinker+toy&m=text
It currently resides at the Museum of Science in Boston.