E-design
Advanced Member level 5
Solve this problem
From another forum: (think it was someone's homework problem)
Original problem: You have 2 offices connected by 3 wires. You are allowed only 1 DC source total and 1 bell or buzzer in each office. Design a wiring diagram so that either office can call each other by ringing the bell or buzzer in the other office. You are only allowed to use mechanical switches.
While this one is very easily solved, someone suggested raising the bar by proposing the following:
Given: Still 2 offices, 1 DC source(2 terminal battery of any voltage -not allowed to split the battery into cells), bell or buzzer (any voltage) in each office,
BUT using only 2 low resistance wires between the offices. (No extra ground return -that would count as a wire).
You may not use any active amplifying components like transistors,IC's or AC, RF, encoding, infrared beams, laser, tunnel-diode, super conductor or any other fancy component.
You may use LED's, diodes, relays etc. Under no circumstance are you allowed to short out the DC supply or insert a fixed resistance for current limit (for instance if both buttons in the 2 offices happens to be pressed simultaneously in your design would short the DC supply). Both buzzers/bells may not sound at the same time
No valid solution was given at the time of this posting (many readers thought it to be impossible). I think it can be solved however. (you need to think outside the box for this one)!
Let's see what our members can come up with. To make it more interesting, instead of posting your design, just mention the total amount of components you needed extra (besides the given battery, 2 bells and 2 wires) to complete the task. We may look and judge the winning designs later on.
If you think really hard, you can do it with 5 extra parts. If you think smart, you will need only 3 (I know of two different ways with 3 extra components, there may be more ways)
From another forum: (think it was someone's homework problem)
Original problem: You have 2 offices connected by 3 wires. You are allowed only 1 DC source total and 1 bell or buzzer in each office. Design a wiring diagram so that either office can call each other by ringing the bell or buzzer in the other office. You are only allowed to use mechanical switches.
While this one is very easily solved, someone suggested raising the bar by proposing the following:
Given: Still 2 offices, 1 DC source(2 terminal battery of any voltage -not allowed to split the battery into cells), bell or buzzer (any voltage) in each office,
BUT using only 2 low resistance wires between the offices. (No extra ground return -that would count as a wire).
You may not use any active amplifying components like transistors,IC's or AC, RF, encoding, infrared beams, laser, tunnel-diode, super conductor or any other fancy component.
You may use LED's, diodes, relays etc. Under no circumstance are you allowed to short out the DC supply or insert a fixed resistance for current limit (for instance if both buttons in the 2 offices happens to be pressed simultaneously in your design would short the DC supply). Both buzzers/bells may not sound at the same time
No valid solution was given at the time of this posting (many readers thought it to be impossible). I think it can be solved however. (you need to think outside the box for this one)!
Let's see what our members can come up with. To make it more interesting, instead of posting your design, just mention the total amount of components you needed extra (besides the given battery, 2 bells and 2 wires) to complete the task. We may look and judge the winning designs later on.
If you think really hard, you can do it with 5 extra parts. If you think smart, you will need only 3 (I know of two different ways with 3 extra components, there may be more ways)
