Micromachines, the Casimir Force, and Geometric shapes...pretty damned interesting read!

SadistNocturne
In a nutshell, this is caused by the medium which is used on the circuit boards, gold, to become electrically active with such a force that it will actually cause the gold connection on the green mother board to arc up off of the board, and break the circuit.

Not so much. You don't use gold for PCB conductors. You sometimes plate pads with gold, although I prefer immersion silver in many cases.

At any rate, the issue with EMF and circuits is not so much that it "strips the conductors off the board" but that you have something happen called gate punchthrough, which damages MOS transistors, and single event upset which can blow the circuitry out by other means, such as scrambling the brains of voltage regulators on the board.

eta: Quite a few PCBs aren't green, either, that's a choice of the designer, it's purely a function of the soldermask layer. If you don't put soldermask on the board, it's white or slightly off-white in most cases. You can spec any color soldermask you like.

...dropping it won't do crap to a thermonuclear weapon. May "damage" it's electronic components, possibly, but the likelyhood of actually detonating the thing is stupendously microscopic in all reality.

It's unlikely to detonate in a way to give you a nuclear yield. However, if the weapon was live and ready to go when dropped on the ground, you could have an issue. Generally, though, what they worry about is the explosives package firing and scattering the fissiles. This can be a real mess.

I said I found this to be a shame to be related to nuclear weaponry. Why not relate it to micromachinery which would be used for such noble purposes as creating nano-tech which could dive into a living creatures bloodstream and detect anomalies. Genetic defects, etc.

I'm sure it'll trickle its way down in time. However, there are so very many bad things you could use micromachinery for. It would be better to skip it altogether, in some ways.

Why not use it to make massively powerful computer systems? This could easily be used to manipulate the Casimir force so as to allow for nano-transistors, which of course are the heart and soul of memory fo a computer system.

The Casimir effect isn't of much use in making transistors. Graphene, now, that's got promise. At any rate, this is just another in a long long series of attempts at making semi-mechanical control packages for weapon systems. Early on, they used hydraulic 'transistors' (see also: fluidics), then electron ballistic logic (an integrated circuit using very tiny vacuum tubes etched into silicon). MEMS systems are but another, probably loco way of doing this.

Because it takes real genius, for sight and insight to innovate and perpetuate positivity today and for the future, it takes a bozos who are comfortable with their salaries and families well being to focus mass amounts of time, energy and money on how to create better death machines.

Bedlam

SadistNocturne
In a nutshell, this is caused by the medium which is used on the circuit boards, gold, to become electrically active with such a force that it will actually cause the gold connection on the green mother board to arc up off of the board, and break the circuit.

Not so much. You don't use gold for PCB conductors. You sometimes plate pads with gold, although I prefer immersion silver in many cases.

At any rate, the issue with EMF and circuits is not so much that it "strips the conductors off the board" but that you have something happen called gate punchthrough, which damages MOS transistors, and single event upset which can blow the circuitry out by other means, such as scrambling the brains of voltage regulators on the board.

Well, I appreciate your input.

However, the documentary I watched, as well as personal investigation (ie, reading up on it in numerous technical ) both referred to the occurrence of the common use of gold being used to form circuits on circuit boards (which is why there is such an industry in "recycling" electronics, because of the gold to be had by reclaiming it) as well as members in the nuclear field that I spoke to regarding the impact of an EMP so as to better understand it.

I am not here to engage in any form of intellectual arm wrestling. I'd appreciate it if you didn't go out of your way looking for such quarry. Particularly as you offer no documented proof specifically stating something other than what I had to say, and appeared to merely be looking to be a contrarian nay-sayer.

Quite honestly, if I am wrong, I would like to be able to review your sources and know better myself.

Not everyone who posts things is simply blowing hot air. This appears to be what you were looking to establish my statements as being.

Also, really, in the grand scheme of things, who actually cares? It's kind of like worrying about the overall yield of a nuclear weapons fallout. People die, period. EMP? Non-guarded (or hardened as the more technical case may be) electronics get fried, Period. I was merely looking to help people better understand what I had personally been taught because genuinely I do not believe most people fully understand what an EMP is, what it does, and how it effects things.


Honestly, had you simply said "You know, I think the impact of an EMP is slightly different, here is what I've found about it [link]", I would have reviewed it, and that would have been that besides me thanking you for the additional information.

Instead, it appears egotism won the day.

SadistNocturne

However, the documentary I watched, as well as personal investigation (ie, reading up on it in numerous technical ) both referred to the occurrence of the common use of gold being used to form circuits on circuit boards (which is why there is such an industry in "recycling" electronics, because of the gold to be had by reclaiming it) as well as members in the nuclear field that I spoke to regarding the impact of an EMP so as to better understand it.

I am not here to engage in any form of intellectual arm wrestling. I'd appreciate it if you didn't go out of your way looking for such quarry. Particularly as you offer no documented proof specifically stating something other than what I had to say, and appeared to merely be looking to be a contrarian nay-sayer.

Well, I do this for a living. Both the PCB part and the EMP part. So, which part do you doubt? Because I've rarely seen any journalist get something technical right. Not knocking the documentary, but do you know which one it was? It's so much easier to tear someone up on "facts" that way.

The reclaiming part is getting gold plate off of connector fingers and plated pads. How many cites would you like? I can probably come up with a few hundred, in all seriousness.

There are many different base materials for PCBs, from paper to low loss RF material. You can get it thin, thick, double clad, single clad, pre preg, some with metal core for heat dissipation. There are high Tg materials, glass, polyimide, glass, fiberglass, cheap phenolics, you name it. And then you can get a number of copper weights and pad platings or coatings. But I've never ever seen gold laminate, not even on military stuff where you might expect it. In fact, if you spec the wrong gold plating you can end up with problems with RF, because they put a nickel pre-plate on some of the types of gold plating (especially hard gold) that will give you a bad impedance step at high frequencies.

The only things you'll see other than copper on pcbs for laminate are materials they're using for heat dissipation (aluminum) or very high power plane currents (brass). I invite you to go find someone making gold laminated pcb.

Quite honestly, if I am wrong, I would like to be able to review your sources and know better myself.

Not everyone who posts things is simply blowing hot air. This appears to be what you were looking to establish my statements as being.

Not hot air, just off on base assumptions. Ignorance rather than malice.

This is one of those fields that there is SO much info on, it's hard to know where to point a tyro. You might try googling "PCB material", I got about 21 million hits. But as a matter of course, we generally use FR4 with 1oz copper for low frequency stuff, and some version of a Rogers material for microwave design. What you use generally depends on what you're doing with it. For 1oz, that's 1 ounce of copper per square foot. The thicker, the higher the current, or lower the impedance, all things being equal. 1 oz is a good general weight. I go higher on power planes sometimes, if you go real high you can end up with the boards bowing due to TCE differentials if you don't balance it out right. We don't do phenolics or pressed paper.

Prior to RoHS, you could use HASL finish on a lot of boards. Not so much the ones with edge finger connectors like a PCI board, there you'd have to use hard gold. But for a general all-around plating on larger spaced SMT tech, HASL is cheap and works well. Now that RoHS is here, you can't get away with it unless you use no-lead HASL, which has its own issues. The big issue you see with current coatings is tin whisker problems. I don't use immersion tin for that reason. Immersion silver is ok, OSP coatings are ok but you have to wear cotton gloves handling the boards and they age out too fast to stock in bulk. Gold as a finish is great because it's really flat and it doesn't corrode. However, it's generally got a nickel underlay that sucks for RF and it can grow tin whiskers through the surface.

A google of "PCB materials" and "PCB finishes" should show you to your own satisfaction that they do not make gold pcb. Gold is a pad finish, not a laminate material.

Also, really, in the grand scheme of things, who actually cares? It's kind of like worrying about the overall yield of a nuclear weapons fallout. People die, period. EMP? Non-guarded (or hardened as the more technical case may be) electronics get fried, Period. I was merely looking to help people better understand what I had personally been taught because genuinely I do not believe most people fully understand what an EMP is, what it does, and how it effects things.

It's an interesting field of study, even more fun to design hardened systems. It borders on magic. However, there are many, many documents online that you might have considered reading instead of what you've read on CT sites.

Had you said, "I've been told that an EMP peels all the gold off a PCB by exciting its molecules" in a comment, I might have gone overboard explaining why that's not true. Including why you don't want undefined states in state machines, and why one-hot designs are better than broadside designs, how, where and when to place impeders instead of filters and the like, how you shield inputs against it, what testing is like when you go through RF Susceptibility.

But as a hard statement of fact that sets the topic for a thread, it's just wrong. Not only aren't PCBs made with gold laminate, gold's not particularly susceptible to RF, any more than any other metal. Nor is the Casimir force related to transistors (other than an interesting yet esoteric conjecture about MOS gates by Srivastava) - the article was about MEMS systems using what amounts to microscaled relay logic in a system where they'd like to dispose of MOS transistors.

Bedlam

SadistNocturne

However, the documentary I watched, as well as personal investigation (ie, reading up on it in numerous technical ) both referred to the occurrence of the common use of gold being used to form circuits on circuit boards (which is why there is such an industry in "recycling" electronics, because of the gold to be had by reclaiming it) as well as members in the nuclear field that I spoke to regarding the impact of an EMP so as to better understand it.

I am not here to engage in any form of intellectual arm wrestling. I'd appreciate it if you didn't go out of your way looking for such quarry. Particularly as you offer no documented proof specifically stating something other than what I had to say, and appeared to merely be looking to be a contrarian nay-sayer.

Well, I do this for a living. Both the PCB part and the EMP part. So, which part do you doubt? Because I've rarely seen any journalist get something technical right. Not knocking the documentary, but do you know which one it was? It's so much easier to tear someone up on "facts" that way.

The reclaiming part is getting gold plate off of connector fingers and plated pads. How many cites would you like? I can probably come up with a few hundred, in all seriousness.

There are many different base materials for PCBs, from paper to low loss RF material. You can get it thin, thick, double clad, single clad, pre preg, some with metal core for heat dissipation. There are high Tg materials, glass, polyimide, glass, fiberglass, cheap phenolics, you name it. And then you can get a number of copper weights and pad platings or coatings. But I've never ever seen gold laminate, not even on military stuff where you might expect it. In fact, if you spec the wrong gold plating you can end up with problems with RF, because they put a nickel pre-plate on some of the types of gold plating (especially hard gold) that will give you a bad impedance step at high frequencies.

The only things you'll see other than copper on pcbs for laminate are materials they're using for heat dissipation (aluminum) or very high power plane currents (brass). I invite you to go find someone making gold laminated pcb.

Quite honestly, if I am wrong, I would like to be able to review your sources and know better myself.

Not everyone who posts things is simply blowing hot air. This appears to be what you were looking to establish my statements as being.

Not hot air, just off on base assumptions. Ignorance rather than malice.

This is one of those fields that there is SO much info on, it's hard to know where to point a tyro. You might try googling "PCB material", I got about 21 million hits. But as a matter of course, we generally use FR4 with 1oz copper for low frequency stuff, and some version of a Rogers material for microwave design. What you use generally depends on what you're doing with it. For 1oz, that's 1 ounce of copper per square foot. The thicker, the higher the current, or lower the impedance, all things being equal. 1 oz is a good general weight. I go higher on power planes sometimes, if you go real high you can end up with the boards bowing due to TCE differentials if you don't balance it out right. We don't do phenolics or pressed paper.

Prior to RoHS, you could use HASL finish on a lot of boards. Not so much the ones with edge finger connectors like a PCI board, there you'd have to use hard gold. But for a general all-around plating on larger spaced SMT tech, HASL is cheap and works well. Now that RoHS is here, you can't get away with it unless you use no-lead HASL, which has its own issues. The big issue you see with current coatings is tin whisker problems. I don't use immersion tin for that reason. Immersion silver is ok, OSP coatings are ok but you have to wear cotton gloves handling the boards and they age out too fast to stock in bulk. Gold as a finish is great because it's really flat and it doesn't corrode. However, it's generally got a nickel underlay that sucks for RF and it can grow tin whiskers through the surface.

A google of "PCB materials" and "PCB finishes" should show you to your own satisfaction that they do not make gold pcb. Gold is a pad finish, not a laminate material.

Also, really, in the grand scheme of things, who actually cares? It's kind of like worrying about the overall yield of a nuclear weapons fallout. People die, period. EMP? Non-guarded (or hardened as the more technical case may be) electronics get fried, Period. I was merely looking to help people better understand what I had personally been taught because genuinely I do not believe most people fully understand what an EMP is, what it does, and how it effects things.

It's an interesting field of study, even more fun to design hardened systems. It borders on magic. However, there are many, many documents online that you might have considered reading instead of what you've read on CT sites.

Had you said, "I've been told that an EMP peels all the gold off a PCB by exciting its molecules" in a comment, I might have gone overboard explaining why that's not true. Including why you don't want undefined states in state machines, and why one-hot designs are better than broadside designs, how, where and when to place impeders instead of filters and the like, how you shield inputs against it, what testing is like when you go through RF Susceptibility.

But as a hard statement of fact that sets the topic for a thread, it's just wrong. Not only aren't PCBs made with gold laminate, gold's not particularly susceptible to RF, any more than any other metal. Nor is the Casimir force related to transistors (other than an interesting yet esoteric conjecture about MOS gates by Srivastava) - the article was about MEMS systems using what amounts to microscaled relay logic in a system where they'd like to dispose of MOS transistors.

Ok bub, you need your ego stroked. Consider it stroked, free of charge.

You were right, I apparently, was wrong even in being born. I'll go back to my zygote stage now.


And nevermind the folks I talked to in the nuclear field, either. Nope, you know better. I am merely a multi-celled organism who doesn't know better.


Is that ego-sufficiently stroked yet ? Can I stop now? My hand is cramping.

To ALL who would read this post.

Please direct ALL questions to the LORD GOD MASTER OF ALL THINGS EMP directly above this post, and the post I just previously made.

And let's not forget nano-technology, and the Casimir Force. This guy is the fashizel!!!

I know nothing. I am but a worm, writhing under the gaze of superiority.

SadistNocturne

And nevermind the folks I talked to in the nuclear field, either. Nope, you know better. I am merely a multi-celled organism who doesn't know better.


Is that ego-sufficiently stroked yet ? Can I stop now? My hand is cramping.

If the folks you talked to in the nuclear field told you an EMP peels gold conductors off of a PCB because it makes gold electrically active, you might consider some basic research on your own, because that's just wrong, too.

It's not ego. It's just that your facts are incorrect. So, here ya go:

Single Event Upsets caused by EMP
Gate punch-through
SCR latchup
single event burnout
PCB materials

SadistNocturne

And let's not forget nano-technology, and the Casimir Force. This guy is the fashizel!!!

And on top of everything else, I brew a mean beer, especially ales. Not too bad a melomel, either. I can tie knots, break ball bearings with a rubber hammer, blow things up, run radios, shoot a pretty good anvil at Christmas and beeline with the old-timers. I can do light farrier work, float horses' teeth and make and repair tack. Hell, I can even turn wine into water.

reply to post by Bedlam


I used pull the same trick at work with a powdered wine when we had to use it for a product.

SadistNocturne
Honestly, had you simply said "You know, I think the impact of an EMP is slightly different, here is what I've found about it [link]", I would have reviewed it, and that would have been that besides me thanking you for the additional information.

Instead, it appears egotism won the day.

I replied to you in the manner you stated above and you went off on a rant against me too. However I decided to apologise instead as your statement might have been a mix up of the affects of heave for systems plugged into the mains.

It appears the documentary you watched was wrong, the 'nuclear' people you spoke to were wrong and your research you did was useless.

Bedlam is 100% correct and I too design hardened systems. You can take a guess what industry I work in.

It appears to be you with the ego problem. The motto of this site is 'Deny Ignorance'...

EasyPleaseMe

SadistNocturne
Honestly, had you simply said "You know, I think the impact of an EMP is slightly different, here is what I've found about it [link]", I would have reviewed it, and that would have been that besides me thanking you for the additional information.

Instead, it appears egotism won the day.

I replied to you in the manner you stated above and you went off on a rant against me too. However I decided to apologise instead as your statement might have been a mix up of the affects of heave for systems plugged into the mains.

It appears the documentary you watched was wrong, the 'nuclear' people you spoke to were wrong and your research you did was useless.

Bedlam is 100% correct and I too design hardened systems. You can take a guess what industry I work in.

It appears to be you with the ego problem. The motto of this site is 'Deny Ignorance'...

edit on 24/10/2013 by EasyPleaseMe because: (no reason given)

edit on 24/10/2013 by EasyPleaseMe because: (no reason given)

Wow You have certainly achieved making me laugh.

The *point* of this article and my post, is about nano-particles, and about the effects of the Casimir forces on them.

The entire aspect of an EMP is 100% ancillary to the topic.

My responses to you, and to the other person who exhibited signs of an over-inflated sense of self were because of that, and what I just mentioned above. Let me recap a few points.

A) I never claimed to be an expert. Rather, I know some folks in the nuclear field, as well as having had done some personal research on the matter myself. I was absolutely under the impression that I had performed due diligence, and that my effort in trying to explain to folks precisely what the effect of an EMP on electronic devices was merely to help others who might not have understood it. Did I ever refute anything you or the other person said? No. Did I however express distaste in the snarky and know it all manner in which both of you focused on ONE SMALL ASPECT of something, rather than the point of the DAMMED ARTICLE AND WHAT I WAS POSTING ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE ? Yes, I did. Am I annoyed with folks such as you who feel the need to find one relatively small aspect of something that you disagree with, completely secondary and merely supporting (hence ancillary, which, btw, I went and checked the definition of the word just to be 100% certain some snothead knowitall such as yourself wouldn't have something ELSE to find point with and go on about senselessly) to the precise issue at hand, the Casimir Force and it's impact on nano-particles. So, apparently, one should have a freaking degree in EVERYTHING before they post here, because annoying fleas such as yourself will slowly work to suck any and all blood out of the corpse before it is long dead.

B) The topic of the damned article is on the CASIMIR FORCE. Get that through your thick freaking skull.

C) Deny Ignorance. Ok, fine, I deny you. I deny your existence. I deny the idea that you exist SIMPLY to be an annoying tick on the body of something that was clearly meant to spark meaningful conversation about NANO-PARTICLES and the CASIMIR FORCE. Oh, and btw, this whole "Deny Ignorance" thing? Yeah. Feel free to take that over to the forums on prophecies. Or on religion. Or on people trashing unattractive transgendered persons. Or on the threads about people who hate others because of their different beliefs. Or on the other more truly ignorant folks that plague this ridiculous hotbed of "DENY IGNORANCE" you so proudly wish you could wave your own banner of.


Hey man, or gal, I completely get it. You "work" in making hardened electronics. That's wonderful. What, no supporting evidence? How about a paystub. How about someone to vouch for you that will actually tell us where they work as well? How about the degree you have that brought you into working with "hardened electronics"?

How about something other than a completely egotistical "I know more than you do, peon" bashing over some ridiculously small point ?


But no. You found approximately 5% of the posting, take issue with it, come across as an authoritative know it all, but amazingly with no proof other than "Hey, you're wrong, I know what I'm talking about", chose to ignore EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of the remaining 95% of the posting and the article that spawned it, which btw, I feel quite certain is what has made the discussion here so amazingly flat and lifeless because you and your "we work in the field" friend decided to stick your noses in over relative minutiae.

So, friend, just do me a huge favor. Read my mind, and do the physical reference I am making towards you right now.

You win, just as Bedlam has. You're right, I'm 100% wrong. I get it.

Want me to put that on my headstone? Tattoo it on my forehead? Make my children walk around with placards displaying this fact?

SadistNocturne

Want me to put that on my headstone? Tattoo it on my forehead? Make my children walk around with placards displaying this fact?

I think a tattoo would be a bit over the top. However, I sort of like the placard idea.

reply to post by SadistNocturne


I'll admit to not yet reading the article, but a question if i may?

This Casimir effect..is it thought to be a similar force or indeed the same force associated with the interesting physical property of our skin (or any part of our body, or any object in the physical world), when at the atomic scale?

Surprisingly, we never actually, truely touch anything. Not in the physical way we would normally think of it.

At the atomic scale, the atoms that make up our skin - never touch or are touched by any other atoms of anything else.

When we clap our hands, we feel the clap of our hands coming together...but that feeling is due to a force, the strong nuclear force holding the atoms together. So, the atoms never actually touch one another and we're really picking up the result of a reaction of this force, to the proximity of our skin atoms.

Could the Casimir effect, be related but somehow different to the stong nuclear force?

MysterX
reply to post by SadistNocturne

 

I'll admit to not yet reading the article, but a question if i may?

This Casimir effect..is it thought to be a similar force or indeed the same force associated with the interesting physical property of our skin (or any part of our body, or any object in the physical world), when at the atomic scale?

Surprisingly, we never actually, truely touch anything. Not in the physical way we would normally think of it.

At the atomic scale, the atoms that make up our skin - never touch or are touched by any other atoms of anything else.

When we clap our hands, we feel the clap of our hands coming together...but that feeling is due to a force, the strong nuclear force holding the atoms together. So, the atoms never actually touch one another and we're really picking up the result of a reaction of this force, to the proximity of our skin atoms.

Could the Casimir effect, be related but somehow different to the stong nuclear force?

I'm certainly no physicist, but it sounds entirely probable to me!

To me, the idea that a force exists, but only engages when involving objects of a microscopic size. Oh, and the SHAPE of the object also determines whether or not the Casimir Force comes into place as well!!

Pretty damned interesting to me.

reply to post by MysterX


Think of it this way.

If you could "see" what's happening way way way down at the sub-atomic level, you would "see" (I use the word loosely) virtual photons swarming around. Between two conductive surfaces placed very very close to each other, it's not possible for some types of virtual particles to "appear", because they don't "fit" in the space available.

Thus, on the outside of the two plates, there are, statistically speaking, more virtual photons than there are between them. This exerts a force on the outside of the plates. As the plates move towards each other, the number of virtual photons that "fit" between them becomes less, the pressure on the outside becomes greater, and they come in contact and stick to each other. Once they come in contact with each other, over time, they'll start to diffuse into each other (generally) and that makes it worse.

Everything in quotes is a way of looking at it that's not strict, but it works for visualizing it.

reply to post by Bedlam


Thanks for the info Bedlam.

So it's really about the mutual attraction of virtual photons in a confined space at or near the quantum scale?

Interesting.

MysterX
reply to post by Bedlam

 

Thanks for the info Bedlam.

So it's really about the mutual attraction of virtual photons in a confined space at or near the quantum scale?

Interesting.

Well, the virtual photons are just boiling in and out of existence all the time. The plates, being so close, keep longer wavelength virtual photons from appearing in between. Since there are fewer virtual photons between them, and more on the outside, there's a net pressure pushing the plates together, because you've got more of them banging on the outside than in the middle.

In a weird way, it's sort of like a Jo block. Two jo blocks are so flat that air won't fit between them when they're mated. So if you touch two of them together and wiggle 'em a bit, the air is excluded between them, and the air hitting the outsides of the blocks holds them together.