Resistance, Capacitance, Inductance, and now MEMRISTANCE

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RE: I would expect the 4th circuit element to have more peculiar characteristics than just a variable resistance.

mivey said:
It does. It has memory
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A potentiometer has memory. A capacitor has memory. An SCR has memory. Heck, a three-wire control circuit has memory. Nothing new and fundamental there.

More food for thought:

1. A miniaturized diode in an IC chip is very very tiny, just a pinpoint of atoms, and behaves differently than a normal resistor, but no one says it is a fourth element.

2. Concerning fundamental circuit elements, could we build a capacitor out of resistors and inductors? Could we build an inductor out of capacitors and resistors? Could we build a resistor out of capacitors and inductors?

Using only two of the original three circuit elements, in any amount and any configuration, is it possible to mimick the third component in a black box, with just two leads coming out of it? And no manner of testing could discern the difference between the real device and the mimicked device?

Good question. I would be willing to bet that these three circuit elements prove fundamental. Now, if we can take a "fourth element" and mimick it with the other three elements, then the "fourth element" really isn't fundamental.

I'm still just winging it here.

Mivey, thanks for the reply.
 
After further internet reading, there is certainly no agreement that the memristor is a new circuit element. I would think that if a new fundamental circuit element were discovered, it would be pretty obvious and straightforward that it was something new and no controversy would exist.

Inductance is measured in Henries.

Capacitance is measured in farads.

Resistance is measured in ohms.

Memristance is measured in ohms.

Memristance is fundamental? Doesn't look that way from here.
 
crossman said:
Now, if we can take a "fourth element" and mimick it with the other three elements, then the "fourth element" really isn't fundamental.
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Given the scenario provided, can you show me the mimic circuit of the memristor?
crossman said:
Memristance is measured in ohms.
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But ohms don't describe the memory state so there has to be more.
 
crossman said:
A potentiometer has memory.
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The memory is a fixed resistance that does not reflect anything about the external mechanical adjustment of the resistance.
crossman said:
A capacitor has memory.
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The charge will dissipate unless the capacitor is mechanically disconnected from the circuit, and even with disconnection the dielectric is not infinite.
crossman said:
An SCR has memory.
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This is a semiconductor, and is active, not passive.
crossman said:
a three-wire control circuit has memory.
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The memory is of, again, mechanical manipulation by forces external to the circuit.

I infer from the Spectrum article that the memristor, being analog, will have a response curve along which the resistance will move in response to the current in the memristor.

I also infer that there is a "saturation" that occurs (for lack of a defined term that I'm aware of, I'll use saturation) when current of sufficient density or duration has passed through a memristor, such that any additional current does not change the resistance, unless the current direction is reversed.

Within the active range along the memristor's response curve, the resistance of the memristor records the history of current previously applied to it, by the circuit within which it resides.
 
I did some internet research last night.

All the info seems to be coming from "pop" science sources or HP themselves. The IEEE article seemed more of a "pop" article than a scientific article.

There was some mention that it would be wise to buy up as much HP stock as possible "right now" because "this is the big one!"

Seems there is a lot of hype from the sci-fi crowd about AI and androids and super-mega-computers based on the memristor...

but the usefulness of the device does not make it a "fourth element". There are also many who disagree with the "fourth element" claim.

I will remain skeptical and await further scientific data.
 
Re: three wire control

al said:
The memory is of, again, mechanical manipulation by forces external to the circuit.
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I would say the same of the memristor. Someone or something external of the memristor must make changes to the applied voltage/current to cause the memristor to do anything.

The memristor is a resistive device. The fact that it changes resistance does not negate the fact that it is still resistance.
 
I don't understand this at all.

600 posts in single phase vs three phase, but here we have the prospect of a new fundamental component of electricity along with the 3 biggies of R, L, and C, and hardly a technical whimper from anyone? What is everyone doing?
 
al hildenbrand said:
...the memristor records the history of current previously applied to it, by the circuit within which it resides.
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or at least the net current
 
crossman said:
Woohoo! Another elemental circuit element!:smile:
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no, it is the most fundamental computer:smile:
crossman said:
I will remain skeptical and await further scientific data.
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Me too. I'm not quite ready to buy a truck load of HP stock. Besides, if I invest that would put the death sentance on it.:D
 
Quote attributed to the Chua guy from an article at SciAm:

"it becomes more or less resistive (less or more conductive) depending on the amount of charge that had flowed through it."

A device that relies on the fundamental element of resistance cannot be a fundamental element.
 
crossman said:
Someone or something external of the memristor must make changes to the applied voltage/current to cause the memristor to do anything.
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External of the memristor, yes.

NOT external of the purely electrical circuit the memristor is part of.
 
I'm still on the fence on this one.

I was first a believer, due to the diagram that was in the article showing the R, L, C, and M with the equations. But then I got a little more skeptical about about the equations and variables they were showing.

True, it appears to be a resistor. But it is integrating the charge that flows, and an integral usually produces a new physical quantity. (The integral of acceleration is velocity, the integral of velocity is distance, the integral of distance is area, etc. etc.)

Steve
 
Williams is the guy who discovered the latest memristor:

Williams explained: "A memristor is essentially a resistor with memory. The actual resistance of the memristor changes depending on the amount of voltage and the time for which that voltage has been applied to the device. The memristors behave just like ordinary resistors, where resistance is equal to the voltage divided by the current."

If it looks like a duck.....
 
steve66 said:
I was first a believer, due to the diagram that was in the article showing the R, L, C, and M with the equations. But then I got a little more skeptical about about the equations and variables they were showing.
Click to expand...

How about this oddity from an article from arstechnica.com

As the authors state, The memristor relates magnetic flux to charge, but once you dive into the math, it actually boils down to a variable resistance as a function of the charge passed through it. As the authors state, ".... the magnetic field does not play an explicit role in the mechanism of memristance

So this is the missing link relating flux to charge, but flux doesn't really have anything to do with it.:-?

True, it appears to be a resistor. But it is integrating the charge that flows, and an integral usually produces a new physical quantity. (The integral of acceleration is velocity, the integral of velocity is distance, the integral of distance is area, etc. etc.)
Click to expand...

What is the integral of distance? What is the integral of the integral of distance? Just because something can be integrated doesn't mean a new physical quantity must exist.

I am too ignorant to acknowledge that the integral of charge would be resistance. Would it?
 
Novelty is patentable

Novelty is patentable

This conversion effect could be duplicated with circuitry. I guess the novelty is that it's all done by materials, like an LED converting electricity directly into light without using heat to generate light.

Instead of using manmade circuitry, no matter how small, this is more along the lines of materials science, where the behavior of atoms duplicates the function of circuitry. Of course, the atoms could say that the circuitry is duplicating their function.

Applications may pop up. Nobody asked for lasers or copying machines.

This opens the door to many "hybrid" things that convert the four undefinables [mass, length, time and charge] into each other in very direct ways.

Piezoelectrical stuff converts force directly into electricity.
Imagine some substance that, when you hit it with a hammer, puts out a brilliant pulse of light. Or, stores the energy from the hammer blow and jumps up vertically by itself ten minutes later. Or puts out a pure tone (oh, wait, that's a piano wire).

Somebody here said "If you can draw on the back of a check. . ."
 
I thought of a name for some substance that,

I thought of a name for some substance that,

when you hit it with a hammer, puts out a brilliant pulse of light.
I'll call it "Tnt."
 
From a layman's perspective, I'm going to think that a fourth fundamental element added to resistance, capacitance, and inductance would be so fundamental that there would be no argument in the scientific community about whether it is truely a fundamental element.

Now, to change the direction of the thread, why is there so little interest from the forum members in such an extravagant claim which has ramifications for the very theory of electricity itself?

Nobody cares?
 
I don't think it is that so much as most are either in shock or just way over their heads..I have trouble with the fourth element but do see great potential to the substance that is capable of handling such a variety of inputs all at the same time..I don't see it as advantageous to the home / commercial industry..yet in the medical and robotics industry I can envision great leaps of technological improvements in the next ten years..It actually could be scary how fast this takes off..
 
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