Chapter Summary:

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• Idea: Many systems rhyme: pneumatics ↔ electronics (pressure ~ voltage; flow ~ current; volume bottle ~ capacitor).

• Hands‑on proof: Building a pneumatic astable multivibrator (air‑horn beeps) makes digital timing concrete.

• Why it matters: Cross‑domain thinking helps engineers abstract and solve novel problems under real‑world constraints.

Additional Notes:

 

Water model to study economics:  https://bit.ly/watermodelforeconomics 

 

Sample pneumatic circuit boards (with grooves in metal plates that allow air to flow through, similar to current in electronic circuits): 

https://www.smcpneumatics.com/otherPDFs/clippard/Acrylic_Circuit_Board_Manifolds.pdf 

 

A multivibrator (mv) is a construction in digital electronics that can represent two different states, such as zero and one. In simple terms, it is just an electronic circuit that can stay either in off or on state represented by the presence or absence of a voltage across two points. This idea is explained in this webpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivibrator. 

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

 

There are elegant java-based web pages that demonstrate three different types of multivibrators:

Bistable http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-multivib-bi.html,

Monostable http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-multivib-mono.html 

Astable http://www.falstad.com/circuit/e-multivib-a.html 

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Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico: https://www.santafe.edu/