Mechanical circuits: electronics without electricity

I wanted to make the circuit equivalent of Braess's Paradox but I'm not sure it's possible with these components. Might need to make some mods! The sponsor is Private Internet Access: Get 82% off and 3 extra months free piavpn.com/stevemould

That little blue link in the chains makes such a difference in comprehension of the whole model. That was an extremely smart design choice. Little visual design choices like this are what make me happy or drive me nuts with stuff I see every day.

I like how this captures the "everything is a resistor" "everything is a capacitor" "everything is an inductor" aspect of electrronics. Like yeah the 'resistor' has a load of 'resistance', but all the rotating parts do. They also all have some mass and intertia, so they all have some 'inductance', etc

I remember an electricity exercise in school where we compared a car shock absorber behavior with an RLC circuit and showed how with the right frequency of currents or bumps on the road, both could enter in resonance. It made me realize how every systems, mechanics, electric or chemicals are interconnected and basically about energy transfer. I still failed that class but had a nice mind blown moment :D

I just gave it to my 8year old son as a christmas present. And we both found it very cool to play with, and I as a electrical Engineer found it very intuitve and thought to my self that it must be possible to build a computer with enough ressources with all of that. Well. Now youtube recommend me your video and you just have done the basics for that. Great Job, great video!

I've never clicked so fast. A physical description of an invisible process. Loved the breakdown!

😂😂😂 "the Veritasium shaped elephant in the room" and later the unibrow (ElectroBoom) joke when talking about the FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER. 😂 It was epic! The end segment was remined me of Alan Turing's mechanical computer (which broke the Enigma and helped to win WW2).

I've long thought of Inductors as "spinning up" like a flywheel, just to keep straight how they work in my head. It's really neat to see them make that analogy into reality.

I am incredibly late to this, but I wanted to mention how impressive I find these. I feel as if these could significantly lower the age at which children could learn about circuits, and perhaps just as importantly they can make learning about them fun.

Had me laughing like a a madman at "full bridge rectifier". Thanks for the video. Great content, as always!

14:57 he just had to pull out the unibrow for the full bridge rectifier!

As a math and science teacher, and a former EE, I think it’s super-important to voice caution with conceptual analogies. Simultaneously I want to redirect people to the mathematics. Most analogies break down. They are like scaffolding in construction or splints and crutches in orthopedics (to give two analogies); simplified aids to understanding totally unsuited to full service. Water and spintronics may HELP people wrap their minds around electrical ideas initially, but it’s important to avoid being sucked too deeply into these particular conceptual holes. They are bottomless (and the depths are filled with meaninglessness). Learn the math, then try to state the implications. In time circuits become obvious. Trying to visualize all the fields may be beyond human capacity, but the math is not. Math is terrible and beautiful in this way: we can discover USEFUL things that our senses and our imaginations will never visualize, analogize or simplify. Such things cognitively reside part-way into the realms of magic, fantasy and science fiction AND YET THEY ARE REAL. In a fundamental sense, then, the math is more “real” than the thoughts of those using it. That’s both weird and wonderful!

I literally get my electrical engineering degree in two days yet this is probably the best analogy for how electrical components operate I have seen so far

The Electroboom reference when you discussed the full bridge rectifier really got me going. Overall this was a nifty demonstration!

I had an A-Level physics teacher who told me that if you were to have a 100% accurate model of something, then you would just have the thing itself. All diagrams, models, descriptions, analogies, abstractions etc. are going to have some level of imperfection about them because they are not the thing they are trying to explain, but in many cases that's exactly why they are helpful tools in allowing our meaty skull-contents to gain some understanding :)

This brings back a lot of memories. When I studied systems modeling in the 1990s I got carried away with Bond Graphs which abstract the domain using flow and effort variables, and allow you to implement a system design in electronics, mechanics, fluidics, or other domains that have analog component equations. It was "fun" translating different systems to see what it would look like. If you want to get intuition about this stuff, I highly recommend bond graphs.

First thing that came to my mind with inductor was dampers or a flywheel on a car. Also loved the little easteregg with full bridge rectifier. With your demo I understood how it works way better.

I want to say two things; 1) Great video! I would love to play around with one of those kits. 2) I saw what you did @ ~15:00 with the sight gag about full bridge rectifiers, and I fully appreciated it. I just didn't want you to think your efforts went unnoticed.

One thing i absolutely love about this is its appearance. It's not some basic colors and simple flat shapes with sans serif text; the colors are metallic and blend well together, the pieces all have etched patterns in them, and the text matches. This is such an elegant, almost Victorian like toy

This is amazing! I have always found helpful the mechanical analogies as they helped me in the beginning to get a feeling for electronics but the fact that you can build and feel it makes it so much more intuitive! Awesome content!