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- Hacker News
- Whatever happened to Edge? They haven't really published since 2018by Metacelsus
- >"Some of the most interesting impedance matching occurs when energy comes in the form of a wave. You have probably noticed in a swimming pool that waves from a splash reflect off the sides of the wall. Because there is an impedance mismatch between the water and the wall, the wave energy is unable to couple into the wall, and so it reflects back."
Observation:
If:
Impedance Mismatch = Reflection Of Waves = No Fixed Wave Nodes (Wave Nodes Must Travel in Space and Time) = Dispersion Of Energy in Time, over Space
Then:
Impedance Matching = Creation Of Standing Waves (creation of fixed, non-moving wave node points in space) = Preservation Of Energy In Space, over Time = Capacitance
(Note that I'm not saying I'm right... I'm just saying that if A implies B (A->B), and B implies C (B->C), then there's a very strong possibility that A implies C through logical transitivity / chain of implications (i.e., A->B->C becomes A->C), in the above case that Impedance Matching strongly implies Capacitance (via Standing Waves)...
Also, it should be noted that Capacitance comes in many forms... Electric (electrostatic), Magnetic, and in theory, any type of electromagnetic wave should be subject to Capacitance under the right conditions...)
Anyway, great article!
- As someone familiar with electrical impedance, I don't like this article. It's trying too hard to sound smart.by smolder
- Coincidentally, I am reading 'Scale' by Geoffrey West where this concept of impedence matching is discussed (amongst many other things). It is fascinating how impedence matching was arrived at in biological systems viq evolutionary pressure to optimize energy usage.by devnonymous
- I was introduced to the need for impedance matching early as young self selected audiophile. Later got more serious during school for audio engineering, but then as my interest in sound got more serios when it concerned guitar amplifiers and a variety of magic smoke, impedance miss matching, became and remains a thing for me. Add in a german copy of a fender bassman that allowed for 5 different input voltages ,two levels of gain not counting three frequency gain controls and switching between two different, non standard speaker impedance settings, and well, it's the tone that counts, and there is nothing like an amp doing it's utmost to fry everything, but built just strong enough to take it. 99% acoustic these days as the tonal control is so imediate, and just going for it involves less police, who I might add are useualy quite relaxed and good about it. My point is that impedance miss matching can lead to resonance, and that can be a good thing, orrrrr it can create too much heat and let the magic white smoke out.by metalman
- > On a larger scale, we can think of atmospheric carbon dioxide as an undesired impedance matcher, coupling the infrared light waves of the sun into the planet. Someday, we may decide to cool our earth by adding tiny particles of dust to our stratosphere, tuning the optical surface to reflect away a tiny portion the infrared waves coming from the sun. The impedance mismatch between the atmosphere and sunlight would create a kind of half-silvered mirror to keep us cooler by reflecting away the unwanted energy flowing into our planet.
Good old geoengineering. The principle has been shown to work - in 536 AD [1], volcanic ashes and/or a cosmic impact event caused decades worth of cooling, causing or contributing to millions of deaths, pest spreads and massive migration movements.
The problem is... if we screw it up and overhit our target, we're in for a repeat, just this time with billions of deaths.
The question is... aren't we in for the same if we let human-caused climate change run its course anyway, just with us frying ourselves to death?
by mschuster91 - I think concepts from impedance matching could also be loosely applied to other areas, for example:
- How veins in organisms branch out to give "energy" to different areas while being the right size for the required supplies
- How people can adapt and communicate with simpler words but taking more time. The optimum is when both parties are "matched"
- Information theory, data across a channel needs to be sent at a rate lower than its capacity, otherwise it's "rejected"
- In organizations, when a message needs to be passed from one area to another one, each impedance mismatch between individuals can lead to some "information bounce" and make it harder to get a message/idea across
- When politics adopt a measure, there's an impedance mismatch when people aren't fully onboard
It's a bit methaphorical but the overall idea is that efficient transfer across an interface requires compatibility between the source and destination. Incompatibilities produce some sort of "reflections", "distortions" or "backpressure".
by gzalo