• skisnow@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Simple, all you need is a 6 ohm resistor and a 0.18457216 ohm resistor in series.

  • yucandu@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I used to make shunt resistors out of a pencil and a piece of paper. Rub pencil all over paper, cut strips to size of required resistance.

    EDIT: I mean megaohm resistors not shunt resistors. 20MOhm for DIY theramin.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    2 days ago

    What’s the significance of that number? It’s less than 0.1 away from tau, but somehow I doubt that’s it…

    • easily3667@lemmus.org
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      2 days ago

      I assumed the number is not significant, figure it’s just supposed to mock the idea that physicists don’t know what tolerances are.

      • Ziglin (it/they)@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        An experimental physicist should know as far as I know meanwhile a real (theoretical) physicist would probably not even touch numbers that have those scary decimals.

  • Fossifoo [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    2 days ago

    A 11.8 and a 13 in parallel is 6.1854838709677 which is 0.01% off from that resistance. Of course even using matched 1% would screw you as soon as someone opens the door.

    • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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      1 day ago

      You could get exactly 6.1854838709677 for an instantaneous moment by heating up a 6ohm resistor.

      • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 day ago

        So you just need to figure out the precise amount of prewarming, then subsequently cooling in coordination with the circuit’s load to make sure it stays at the right temperature?

      • xthexder@l.sw0.com
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        1 day ago

        Based on some rough calculations… no. A precision of 0.0000000000001 ohms is 1000x less than the resistance of 1um of copper with a diameter of 1cm (A piece of wire 10,000x wider than it is long). I’m sure a few molecules of air between your contact points would cause more noise in the measurement.

      • Adalast@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I thought it had to do with physicists working off theoretical calculations finding precise values for the circuit and not realizing that components come in discrete values.

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          23 hours ago

          Yeah, but they could just calculate the right mix of parallel and series discrete resistors to get there.

          It’s gonna make a long BOM though.

          • Adalast@lemmy.world
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            21 hours ago

            Lol, I was actually going to add that but decided it would be too pedantic if I said it myself.

  • A_A@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Fixed resistors
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor
    The TCR of foil resistors is extremely low, and has been further improved over the years. One range of ultra-precision foil resistors offers a TCR of 0.14 ppm/°C, tolerance ±0.005%, long-term stability (1 year) 25 ppm, (3 years) 50 ppm (further improved 5-fold by hermetic sealing), stability under load (2000 hours) 0.03%, thermal EMF 0.1 μV/°C, noise −42 dB, voltage coefficient 0.1 ppm/V, inductance 0.08 μH, capacitance 0.5 pF.

    Quantum based resistors :
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Hall_effect
    Quantum Hall effect →
    Applications →
    Electrical resistance standards :

    (…) Later, the 2019 revision of the SI fixed exact values of h and e, resulting in an exact
    RK = h/e2 = 25812.80745… Ω.

    (this is precise to at least 10 significant digits)

    Quantum Ampere Standard
    https://www.nist.gov/noac/technology/current-and-voltage/quantum-ampere-standard
    .
    https://www.nist.gov/noac/technology/current-and-voltage

    (…) Quantum-based measurements for voltage and current are moving toward greater miniaturization (…)

    (there also been research for defining a quantum based volt standard)

    • StThicket@reddthat.com
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      2 days ago

      To a mathematician, pi is 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993

      To an engineer, pi is 3

      The joke is basically the same, since you get resistors in certain values, and it’s necessary to select the value closest to the one you need

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        1 day ago

        To an engineer, pi is 3

        No, to an engineer pi is 22/7, 355/113 if your tolerances are really tight. 3 is pi to a theologist, because that’s what the Bible uses.

      • lennivelkant@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 day ago

        I mean, depending on your calculations and scale, you might go a little more precise with it. At a diameter of, say, 10m for a semicircular bridge arc, that’s a difference of 0.7m.

        (For mathematicians, the difference will be 0.00796m and then some I can’t be arsed to write out, but compared to the total arc of 15.7m, that’d be a deviation of 0.05% which is basically zero anyway)

    • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 day ago

      I think it’s a joke about physicists not understanding tolerances.

      I remember hearing an old story about a company buying signs from a contractor. The contractor produced all kinds of things, so it was fairly straightforward to send them the CAD file and stop worrying about it. One manager did an audit, and realized they were paying hundreds of dollars each for these basic signs. They weren’t fancy or anything, and were just signs throughout the facility that got updated regularly. So why the hell were they paying so much for what should have been a simple print job?

      After some investigating, the manager discovered it was because the company didn’t want to hire an artist to design the signs; They just had one of their engineers do it. And the engineer who did the design forgot to change their default tolerances from 3/1000 of an inch. So to comply with the order as written, the contractor was busting out calipers and meticulously measuring the spacing and sizing on each letter before it shipped out the door.