Stanford shared this on Youtube!
Researchers have built a machine that texts sends messages using common chemicals. This system could be used in nanoparticle communication or to send secret notes.
The Arduino blog ccovered this as well!
Stanford researchers led by post-doctoral fellow Nariman Farsad have built a machine that sends text messages using common chemicals.
If you’re building a project, and need to send a signal from one component to another, solutions generally involve wiring them together, or some sort of radio, perhaps Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Farsad, however, has been working on something entirely different. His system uses commonly-available chemicals to turn a liquid, either basic or acidic, in sequence as a binary communication protocol.
But instead of zeros and ones, it sends pulses of acid (vinegar) or base (glass cleaner). The researchers type their desired message in a small computer, which sends a signal to a machine that pumps out the corresponding “bits” of chemicals. The liquids travel through plastic tubes to a small container that reads the solution’s pH. Changes in pH are then transmitted to a computer that deciphers the encoded message.