Stumbling Blocks

It is 810nicle so its time for some Bionicle build. In this case, some more Cyberbeasts character built out of lego. Makes sense since Bionicle was a massive influence on Cyberbeasts.

could be worse -

Clinic- Bubblegum (Indie Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Psychedelic Pop) Released: October 4, 2010 [Domino Recording Company] Producer(s): John Congleton

Anyway, did y'all hear that they nuked the White House?

It turns out that pretty much everything humans can do with technology, nature has already figured out, maybe at least to a lesser extent. Nearly everything. So far I don't think nature has managed intercontinental ballistic missiles. I hope.

One fun example is radar jamming. Radar works by bouncing a radio wave off something and seeing what comes back. You can jam it by saturating the sender with noise. The signal sender will know there's something out there, but won't be able to tell what size, shape, or distance.

The closest natural analogue to radar is echolocation, famously done by bats. When bats prey on moths, they rely on making high-pitched sounds which reflect off their target to make up for their weak eyesight (they're not totally blind).

The first part of the reply shot from the moths in the echolocation arms race came from tiger moths. They're able to produce ultrasonic clicks in response to bats' echolocation. Most species of tiger moth simply use their clicking pattern to warn bats that the moths are toxic.

However, some tiger moths have taken it further by producing clicks at an astonishingly high rate: Up to 4,500 per second! It's incredibly effective. Research shows that moths using echolocation jamming cut down bats' success rate by 90%.

The bats aren't staying idle, though. A 2022 study showed that to counter, bats are changing their echolocation frequencies to one the moths aren't jamming.

Bats also need to worry about accidentally jamming themselves. A bat's echolocation ping is one of the loudest sounds an animal can make, and their hearing is highly sensitive. If they heard their own ping directly, they could be deafened.

To account for that, bats use a small muscle in their ear to clamp their ear bones in place (preventing them from vibrating and picking up sounds) while emitting a ping. It's released when the echo is expected to return.

I'm not sure if I'm dating myself with this, but 'degaussing' is something I think mostly gets used in a modern context meaning that button on a CRT monitor that you press and the image goes all wobbly. People remember doing that, right?

I wanted to go into degaussing and what it actually is, but first I have to figure out just how a CRT works. And that's an entire topic of itself! So I'll do degaussing tomorrow and boring physics today.

A CRT is a cathode-ray tube. Today's LCD (liquid crystal displays) and similar flat-panel displays work by having a layer of crystals which change color when hit with an electric current, to sum up a complex technology in a single sentence.

Despite being the older invention, CRTs are much more complex! In fact, their invention started at the end of the 1800s, before we even had most modern electronics to attach to them, 40 years before Philo Farnsworth was responsible for starting debates over who really invented television.

A cathode is a pretty basic term. It's a negative electrode in an electrical circuit. Some physicists in 1859 noticed that a cathode in a vacuum would emit some kind of charged particle. They just called it a 'ray' because electrons, which are what was being emitted, wouldn't be named until 1891. It's amazing how much of science is "and someone figured out the most important part of it decades later".

Anyways, people figured out that these electron beams could be controlled with high precision. The next step was having them emit light. A screen on the other end of the vacuum tube is coated in phosphor, which outputs light when hit with electrons.

The direction of the electrons is controlled using electromagnetic coils around the CRT which alter their angles. The electron beams therefore 'sweep' across the screen, updating it a bit at a time, but so fast that it looks like a steady picture to human eyes. The description uses the term "magnetic lens" which I feel wholly unqualified for.

The ability of the magnets to alter the path of the electrons is what decides how large the screen can be, as well as how deep the overall device has to be: Turning the electrons at a sharper angle (shallower box or larger screen) requires a stronger magnetic lens.

I was going to describe how color CRTs work, but no, absolutely not.

That vacuum, by the way, is why CRT monitors are so heavy. The electrons need to move in vacuum so they don't run into things and ruin the picture, but keeping a vacuum from imploding is tough. The glass walls of the tube need to be extremely thick to avoid shattering.

If they do break, the sudden collapse of the vacuum tends to throw tiny shards of glass all over the place. Don't break CRTs. Also, don't touch the insides, because those electron beam generators carry a massive charge, even after being unplugged!