Engineers with Stanford University on the U.S. west coast have designed a computer that runs entirely on water droplets and can perform like regular computer, only at a much slower pace.
Professor Manu Prakash at the university's Bioengineering Department and his team have been working on the idea for almost a decade.
The computer resembles a microchip, the size of a postage stamp, but researchers claim that it is enough to prove their idea. Prakash surprised the world last year when he created a paper microscope that folds like Origami, known as the Foldscope.
In the microchip, with circuitry pattern similar to a Pac-Man maze, the researchers trapped tiny water drops infused with magnetic nanoparticles. When they placed rotating magnets underneath the circuit, the droplets moved in a synchronized way, resembling binary code, the language used in computing.
By Ruchi Singh
Professor Manu Prakash at the university's Bioengineering Department and his team have been working on the idea for almost a decade.
The computer resembles a microchip, the size of a postage stamp, but researchers claim that it is enough to prove their idea. Prakash surprised the world last year when he created a paper microscope that folds like Origami, known as the Foldscope.
In the microchip, with circuitry pattern similar to a Pac-Man maze, the researchers trapped tiny water drops infused with magnetic nanoparticles. When they placed rotating magnets underneath the circuit, the droplets moved in a synchronized way, resembling binary code, the language used in computing.
By Ruchi Singh
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