IEEE Spectrum April 2022

Most recent stories in IEEE Spectrum April 2022

• “There is no stronger resonance than that of your inner jealous 5-year-old seeing the calculator that your older sister wouldn’t let you play with.”

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  What Texas Instruments’ Little Professor Can Teach Us

  ieee.org - Allison Marsh

  In the early 1990s, the literary critic Stephen Greenblatt wrote about the tension between resonance and wonder in museums. The wondrous objects, he …

• Making plate glass takes more effort—and energy—than you think.

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  The Stunning Carbon Footprint of Plate Glass

  ieee.org - Vaclav Smil

  Plate glass, like steel, is all around us. It is taken for granted, and most people have no idea how it is made. Although both materials are ancient, …

• A device called a magnetic amplifier once competed with both tubes and transistors.

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  The Vacuum Tube’s Forgotten Rival

  ieee.org - Ken Shirriff

  During the Second World War, the German military developed what were at the time some very sophisticated technologies, including the V-2 rockets it …

• It makes a stator out of an ultrathin printed-circuit board, instead of a heavy iron core.

  

  IEEE Spectrum

  

  This Axial-Flux Motor With a PCB Stator Is Ripe for an Electrified World

  ieee.org - Paulo Guedes-Pinto

  The heart of any electric motor consists of a rotor that revolves around a stationary part, called a stator. The stator, traditionally made of iron, …

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  IEEE Spectrum

  

  The Plan to Give the Moon Decent Wireless Coverage

  ieee.org - Alessandro Balossino

  Earth’s moon is the target of more missions than at any time since the Apollo era, by both space agencies and commercial entities. NASA, for example, …

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  IEEE Spectrum

  

  The Algorithm that Mapped Omicron Shows a Path Forward

  ieee.org - Emily Waltz

  When Omicron, the now ubiquitous COVID-19 variant, was first discovered in South Africa in November, scientists were immediately worried. Genetic …