Social Good Engineering Magazine: GineersNow Social Innovation GineersNow Engineering Magazine Issue No. 001 | Page 14

Photo Source: New Mobile Life
E N V I R O N M E N TA L E N G I N E E R I N G
Water-Droplet Operated Computer
Just add water to make your computer work.
W
ater and a computer can be an
unusual combination. However, an
assistant professor of Bioengineering
in Stanford, along with his students,
has invented a synchronous com-
puter that works on the principle
of moving droplets of water. These computers are
being produced in such a way that they will be able
to control as well as manipulate physical matter.

The group of engineers has been working
on this project for almost a decade now. The idea
of creating such computers came to Manu Prakash
during his graduation. The dynamics of the fluid
droplet manipulates the basic element of computer
science.

The computer performs the same
functions as that of a normal electronic computer.
Nevertheless, it is comparatively slow. Though, this
is not included in the list of goals of the developers.
The primary aim is to concentrate on the physical
dimension and not on the fragments of informa-
tion.

The all-new computer chip has been
based on the rotating magnetic fields and a type of
maze of glass for small single droplets that is incul-
cated with the magnetic field. Each movement of
the rotating magnetic field mobilizes the droplets
of liquid in a proposed direction. In a binary code,
the presence of a water droplet is regarded as 1.

These first generation chips are very
minute in size. They’re almost half the size of
available postage stamps. In fact the water droplets
are smaller than the size of the poppy seeds. The
engineers encourages anyone who are interested in
trying out their new invention. They also want to
enable people who want to design new circuits that
are based on their start-up building blocks.

Opening this technology to the public,
can open doorways for new technologies that can
spring up. These new technologies can lead to
different new understandings that may or may not
make the world a better place.
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