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".
The whole article appears use a very loose philosophical definition of "impedance". As a mechanical engineer, none of the mechanical examples are correct either when there are real-world examples that actually meet the more strict technical definition of impedance matching, mass-damper systems in skyscrapers is immediate example that comes to mind.
I just find this an interesting comment. Having an electrical engineers education, there is this interesting repetition of formula which is unmistakable.
First you learn the physical equations, mostly applied to sound interestingly. Then at some point you learn about transmission line theory and maximum power transfer theory. Lastly, you get introduced to Maxwells equations, and how they produce the phenomena you’ve been learning about for years.
Unfortunately that is where my learning stopped, and I never got an answer to how quantum theory resolves with Maxwells equations, and how it interacts with standard model and special/general relativity.
Honestly I’d love an explanation of the standard model that wasn’t covered with mystery and math. It makes the idea of understanding particle physics impossible.
Unfortunately, in my experience the more advanced/nuanced/complete of an explanation of physical phenomenon you want, the more math heavy and abstract the "real answer" becomes. Quantum Electrodynamics is some beefy stuff, the math is gnarly, and it is built on an increasing pyramid of mathematical reasoning and intuition as well as the steps of physical reasoning and intuition that you mention.
Remembering my graduate physics days im astounded that i was able to understand it, and am unable to really follow it now, as that higher math has gotten preeeety rusty.
Feynman diagrams are the attempt to loop back around and represent this field without all the math, but my experience was you have to have done the math first otherwise they are just so much arcane heiroglyphs. the wikipedia illustrates this well, where you can see a relatively clear diagram and corresponding equation, but i recall whole pages of a notebook to get one _line_ of an equation down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Feynma...
I say all of this not to suggest a clear explanation is impossible, but it sure wouldn't be easy. Love to see it though.
It's just the transformer example does not sit correctly inside the EE domain definition of impede. Once you understand that word is not locked up to the EE domain, everything is fine (except in the EE world of course).
The abstraction of impedance matching should be to "tune things to make them more efficient in their usability".
Their examples don't sit with impedance matching to me. They're all conversions or filters. The first thing was either not usable or they purely chopped off a part, not pointed it in the right direction.
In fact, the examples more or less all sit in a group in which impedance matching does not belong
Edit: the car transmission I'll give since there's a power vs speed decision that needs to be coupled
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.
> 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?
IMO it's a very questionable solution anyway. Either you have to constantly replenish this dust, causing huge economic costs, or you have to engineer it in a way that keeps the dust airborne for long times, likely causing all kinds of health effects when breathing it and making it very difficult to remove it from the atmosphere in any significant amounts on short notice.
All of these side effects just disappear if we were to engineer this dust to emit a lot of radiation outside of the absorption spectra of water vapour and CO2, absorb a lot of light in the the absorption spectra of water and CO2, mix it as pigment into paint, rooftiles, road surfaces, and so on.
That way absorbed direct radiation gets its climate change contribution cut about in half and probably much more for diffuse radiation.
We could also biologically engineer e.g. grasses to have similar effects.
I'm a huge fan of engineering various plants to emit light in specific wavelengths anyway, and making sure that e.g. insects pollinate and birds spread them much more preferentially. That way you can outcompete or naturally cross invasive species with them and then you'll just look from satellites were the stuff you dislike is spreading and send in automated drones to highly selectively spray anything that has weirdly glowing pollen stuck to it. And after repeating that a few times, you get rid of your trojan-glowies.
Would tiny airborne particles be safe for our lungs ?
Would they cool earth in such a way that it would offset carbon dioxide uniformly or would it lead to even more change ? Climate change is undesirable, wether or not Climate warming is invloved.
> Would tiny airborne particles be safe for our lungs ?
Almost certainly not. Pretty much anything inhaled in large amounts will cause pneumoconiosis including pollen. Some stuff like asbestos or coal dust are worse than others, but even biologically inert particles tend to cause health problems.
From your link, global temperature anomaly were -0,4°C. We are at +1,5°C. We would need something like 9 very big volcano injecting tons of sulfure in the upper atmosphere to cancel out the recent global warming.
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".
As someone familiar with electrical impedance, I don't like this article. It's trying too hard to sound smart.
The whole article appears use a very loose philosophical definition of "impedance". As a mechanical engineer, none of the mechanical examples are correct either when there are real-world examples that actually meet the more strict technical definition of impedance matching, mass-damper systems in skyscrapers is immediate example that comes to mind.
I just find this an interesting comment. Having an electrical engineers education, there is this interesting repetition of formula which is unmistakable.
First you learn the physical equations, mostly applied to sound interestingly. Then at some point you learn about transmission line theory and maximum power transfer theory. Lastly, you get introduced to Maxwells equations, and how they produce the phenomena you’ve been learning about for years.
Unfortunately that is where my learning stopped, and I never got an answer to how quantum theory resolves with Maxwells equations, and how it interacts with standard model and special/general relativity.
Honestly I’d love an explanation of the standard model that wasn’t covered with mystery and math. It makes the idea of understanding particle physics impossible.
Unfortunately, in my experience the more advanced/nuanced/complete of an explanation of physical phenomenon you want, the more math heavy and abstract the "real answer" becomes. Quantum Electrodynamics is some beefy stuff, the math is gnarly, and it is built on an increasing pyramid of mathematical reasoning and intuition as well as the steps of physical reasoning and intuition that you mention.
Remembering my graduate physics days im astounded that i was able to understand it, and am unable to really follow it now, as that higher math has gotten preeeety rusty.
Feynman diagrams are the attempt to loop back around and represent this field without all the math, but my experience was you have to have done the math first otherwise they are just so much arcane heiroglyphs. the wikipedia illustrates this well, where you can see a relatively clear diagram and corresponding equation, but i recall whole pages of a notebook to get one _line_ of an equation down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Feynma...
I say all of this not to suggest a clear explanation is impossible, but it sure wouldn't be easy. Love to see it though.
It's just the transformer example does not sit correctly inside the EE domain definition of impede. Once you understand that word is not locked up to the EE domain, everything is fine (except in the EE world of course).
The first three examples they use are filters.
The abstraction of impedance matching should be to "tune things to make them more efficient in their usability".
Their examples don't sit with impedance matching to me. They're all conversions or filters. The first thing was either not usable or they purely chopped off a part, not pointed it in the right direction.
In fact, the examples more or less all sit in a group in which impedance matching does not belong
Edit: the car transmission I'll give since there's a power vs speed decision that needs to be coupled
Anything from a funnel to a reduction gear on a ship is an example.
Does low verbalization imply that a concept isn't widely known?
Or is this blog post, itself, an example of impedance matching?
Just read this article as well and thought the same. Quite a bit disappointed.
Whatever happened to Edge? They haven't really published since 2018
Speculation, but Edge was John Brockman’s thing and he was heavily connected to Epstein, so probably has become a bit toxic for potential contributors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brockman_(literary_agent)...
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.
> 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?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536
IMO it's a very questionable solution anyway. Either you have to constantly replenish this dust, causing huge economic costs, or you have to engineer it in a way that keeps the dust airborne for long times, likely causing all kinds of health effects when breathing it and making it very difficult to remove it from the atmosphere in any significant amounts on short notice.
All of these side effects just disappear if we were to engineer this dust to emit a lot of radiation outside of the absorption spectra of water vapour and CO2, absorb a lot of light in the the absorption spectra of water and CO2, mix it as pigment into paint, rooftiles, road surfaces, and so on.
That way absorbed direct radiation gets its climate change contribution cut about in half and probably much more for diffuse radiation.
We could also biologically engineer e.g. grasses to have similar effects.
I'm a huge fan of engineering various plants to emit light in specific wavelengths anyway, and making sure that e.g. insects pollinate and birds spread them much more preferentially. That way you can outcompete or naturally cross invasive species with them and then you'll just look from satellites were the stuff you dislike is spreading and send in automated drones to highly selectively spray anything that has weirdly glowing pollen stuck to it. And after repeating that a few times, you get rid of your trojan-glowies.
Would tiny airborne particles be safe for our lungs ?
Would they cool earth in such a way that it would offset carbon dioxide uniformly or would it lead to even more change ? Climate change is undesirable, wether or not Climate warming is invloved.
> Would tiny airborne particles be safe for our lungs ?
Almost certainly not. Pretty much anything inhaled in large amounts will cause pneumoconiosis including pollen. Some stuff like asbestos or coal dust are worse than others, but even biologically inert particles tend to cause health problems.
From your link, global temperature anomaly were -0,4°C. We are at +1,5°C. We would need something like 9 very big volcano injecting tons of sulfure in the upper atmosphere to cancel out the recent global warming.
And probably 3 meteor impact.
who'd be in charge of the thermostat? if this followed my offices practices we'd be in ww3 before any heating/cooling had a chance to kill anyone