Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and I'm an executive producer right here at the Heart Radio. And how the tech are you. I've got an upcoming episode with a special guest that I'm really excited about. And in that episode, I'm probably gonna talk a little bit about a system that uses cams. So I thought today's Tech Stuff Tidbits, I would actually talk about cams, what they are, what they do. This will be a true tidbits episode. It will not be a fifty minute tidbits episode. So we're just gonna look at cams and what they do. Now. And now, first of all, I am talking about mechanical cams mechanical systems, So when I say cams, I am not talking about cameras. So this is not about webcams or anything like that. That's a totally different thing. Instead, we're talking about components used in some mechanical systems for the purposes of generating a particular motion at a specific timing. So, to put it simply, cams are components in a mechanical system that convert ordinary rotational motion into something else typically into a reciprocating motion, a linear reciprocating motion, so it and up and down or in and out motion, if you want to think of it that way. Now, to talk about cams and how they work, let's let's really consider mechanical systems, and I'm going to really look at, you know, electro mechanical systems in particular. So first let's let's think about motors and electro magnets. And I know I talk about electro magnets a lot on this show, but as it turns out, there at the heart of a lot of different mechanical and electrical systems. So it comes with the territory, right. I'm sure most of us know that if you wrap a conductive wire around, say a core of iron, like a little iron rod, or the very simple version an iron nail. So you get some copper wire and you wrap several coils around a copper nail, and then you connect that wire to something that generates a current, like a battery. Then you get yourself an electro magnet. The electro magnet will have its own magnetic field, with its own magnetic north and magnetic south pole, and it will behave just like a permanent magnet would, which means if you bring the north end of your electro magnet near the south end of a permanent magnet, the two magnets will attract each other. If you bring the north end of your electro magnet near the north end of a permanent magnet, they will repel each other because opposite magnetic charges attract, and like magnetic charges or poles, if you prefer repel. Now, let's make things a bit more complicated. Let's say that we connect our electromagnet not to a battery which supplies direct current, meaning the current always flows in the same direction, but to a source of alternating current. So now the direction of current switches from one direction to the other, often at very high frequencies, and each time it switches, the magnetic field switches as well. So when the current flows in one direction, the north poles on one side of the electromagnet the south poles on the other, current switches directions those poles flip. So what was the north pole of the electromagnet is now the south pole, and vice versa. Now, if you brought this kind of electro magnet near a permanent magnets, poll doesn't matter which of the poles we're talking about. Your electro magnet would alternately attract and repel the permanent magnet because the poll would be flipping on your electromagnet. So some times it would be north to north and sometimes it would be north to south. All right, Now, let's imagine that we've got a permanent magnet. Let's say it's in the shape of a U. Okay, and the north pole is on the left tip of the U from our perspective, and the south pole is on the right tip of the U. This magnet does not move. It's in a fixed position. We call it a statter. It is stationary, so statters s T A T O R. In between these poles. In the center between the two we mount our electro magnet, which has no magnetic field. If we're not running a current through those coils, right, and our electro magnet is on an axle that can rotate, so the electromagnet can spin freely between the two poles of the permanent magnet. Now, if we run alternating current through our electro magnet at the right frequency, we can cause this electro magnet to rotate and keep rotating by flipping the direction of the current and thus the electro magnets magnetic field, and it will consistently push against the permanent magnets magnetic field on either side, because that field is not going to move right. The permanent magnets field is fixed. It's a statu our rotor the electro magnet. It's poles keep flipping so that it's consistently pushing against these magnetic fields, causing the electro magnet to rotate. So if you just time this perfectly, you can create this source of rotational force. Now, if we want to use a direct current, we could. You know, the problem with the direct current is unless you have a way of flipping the poles of your electro magnet, your electro magnet is just going to orient itself so that the opposite poles are attracted to the permanent magnet. Right, it'll move in a horizontal plane relative to our our permanent magnet's polls, and it won't go any further than that because it will be held in place by magnetic force. But if we use a structure called a commutator, which effectively flips the polarity of the electro magnets magnetic field, by changing how the electromagnet connects to the circuit that's providing the current as the electromagnet rotates, then you have essentially the same effect as if you had connected the electro magnet to an alternating current. There's more to it than that, but we've already spent enough time here, and I've done other episodes where I've talked about commutators and how they work. Now, the point is that these motors, these electric motors, generate rotational force. But that's all they do, right. They can't they can't generate a different kind of force there. The way that they are designed mechanically means that they make things spin. They don't make things go up and down or anything like that. But rotational force can be useful for a lot of stuff. Like you know, a relatively simple use would be to drive an electric drill. The rotational force from the motor provides the drilling action you need. It's providing the rotational force to your drill. Bit. So there are legit uses, simple uses for the electric motor, but a lot of mechanical systems often require other types of motion, not just rotational. So to accomplish that we have to get a little creative. We have to think of ways to convert rotational force generated by the electric motor into something else, and that's kind of where cams can come in. So a cam rotates on the axis of a shaft that could be driven by something like an electric motor, So it's getting rotational force from some part of the mechanical system. And a cam on a shaft is frequently and a regularly shaped object. It can be sort of like an eccentric wheel is a very frequent example. So imagine you have a wheel. Let's start with a perfect circle. Just imagine a perfect circle on your mind. Now imagine deforming this perfect circle a bit. Maybe parts along the circumference bulge out, making it a little more oblong, or maybe they dip inward a bit, so that you have still generally a circular shape, but it's not perfect anymore. There are parts of the circumference where it's a different shape. So by positioning cams at specific points along a shaft where they will make contact with other mechanical elements such as levers, you can translate rotational motion into something else, like reciprocating linear motion. So let me give you an example imagine you have a horizontal shaft that can rotate in a particular way. And this shaft, and in this example, we'll say it connects to an electric motor. So the electric motor is providing the rotational force turning the shaft, and you know, let's say it's a clockwise direction from our perspective. And then let's say that we have a cam positioned midway down the length of this shaft. It is permanently attached to the shaft. It will rotate along with the shaft. It is as as far as we're concerned, part of that shaft. This cam, let's say his egg shaped, so one side of the cam bulges outward compared to the rest of it. And positioned above this cam is a type of lever that will call a cam follower. So this follower is actually making contact with the surface of the cam itself. So if you're thinking about let's say a vinyl record or a wheel, it's making contact with the the outer surface of this wheel, like the edge of it. In other words, and the lever is attached to something else in this mechanical system. So let's say in our example, this lever which can move up and down is connected to a little mechanical gopher, and this gopher will pop out of a hole that's in some rundown and yet still vaguely charming theme park attraction at your local amusement park. So as the shaft rotates, the cam rotates too, because it's attached to the shaft, it's part of the shaft, and the bulging bit of this oblong cam's surface rises up to meet the lever, which means it pushes against the lever, pushing it upward. So the lever goes up, which in turn pushes our little mechanical gopher up out of the hole. The cam continues to rotate with the shaft, and so the bulging bit of this part of the cam is now sloping away from the lever, so the lever can actually start to come back down again. It's sliding along the surface of the cam as the cam rotates away, and you know, gravity just pulls our little gopher back down the hole. The full distance that the lever is able to travel due to how it connects to this cam is called the throw. That is the throw of our cam follower. Now the cam followers don't have to rely purely on gravity to move back down. In fact, that would be a very bad design because over time the leaver could start to stick in the up position. Our gopher might not ever go back down into its hole. It just stays up there, which is just another reminder of how this park isn't the same as it was when you were a kid. No, I made myself sad. We'll tell you what. We're gonna take a quick break. When it come back, we'll get happy again. Okay, let's get back to our discussion about cams and and the example we were thinking about with the little gopher that can pop up and down based upon the rotation of this cam pushing against a lever. Again, you probably wouldn't just rely on gravity on these systems. You would probably have some other form of device that would ensure that the lever would return to uh it's full down position in this case, so we would probably have something like maybe a spring connected to this lever, so that when the cam is pushing against the lever, pushing it up, you know, moving the gopher up out of the whole. In the process, the lever is also compressing a spring, and as the cam's edge slopes away from the lever, allowing it to move back down again. The spring actually forces the lever to move back down towards the cams surface, so that you don't just have a gopher stuck out of its hole. Internal combustion engine cars use cams. In fact, they have a special shaft called the cam shaft that uses these to govern the intake and exhaust valves in the combustion engine. That's why I specifically say internal combustion engine cars. The cams in this case are used to to govern, or to control when an intake valve is open and when it's closed, and when the exhaust valve is open and when it's closed. You don't need those in an electric vehicle because you don't have the combustion uh cylinders. So let's talk about internal combustion engines and cams in those really quickly to kind of understand how cams are used in modern mechanical systems. So, an internal combustion engine burns a mixture of fuel and air inside fix cylinders. The energy generated from this combustion it's really an explosion, is used to push a piston outward. The piston, in turn provides power to the car's power train. Via a crankshaft and then in turn provides power to the wheels. The crankscheft also, by the way, provides rotational power for the actual camshaft. That's part of this system too. Will get to that. And all of this means that you can have your car go without having to do the flintstones thing and just use your feets. So the pistons connect to a crank cheft via piston rods. It's that connection that allows the reciprocating motion of the pistons, the in and out motion of the pistons as they move relative to the cylinders, into rotational motion for the shaft itself. These are really tricky things to talk about without the use of visual aids, but you know, just think that the up and down motion of the piston is connected via this rod to a shaft that can then rotate due to the up and down motion of the piston. All right, Now, let's talk about a four stroke engine because that will illustrate how this is all working and where the cams come involved. So when we say stroke, what we mean is one full travel of a piston, either inward into the cylinder or outward relative to the cylinder. So in is one stroke, out is another stroke, and internal combustion engines traditionally use four strokes, so those four strokes are intake. This is where a cylinder pulls in air, and it does this by opening the intake valve. As the piston is traveling outward from the cylinder, This draws air into the cylinder, kind of like if you were pulling the plunger back on a syringe. At the end of the stroke, the intake valve closes, which is absolutely critical. It has to close, and that seals the cylinder. You also get a mix of fuel that enters into the cylinder at this point, so in older cars that would come from a carburetor, in modern vehicles from the fuel injection system. The next stroke, the piston is moving back inward relative to the cylinder, and this stroke is called compression because the piston, which is you know, snugly set in the cylinder so nothing can escape along the sides of the piston. As it moves back into the cylinder, the piston compresses this mixture of air and fuel that has entered into the cylinder. At the end of this stroke, the piston is as far into the cylinder as it goes, and both intake and exhaust valves have to be closed, right, because if either valve were open, then that would mean that you couldn't compress the mixture. The mixture would be forced out of the cylinder because one of the valves had opened, So these valves have to be shut. The next stroke is combustion. This is when the spark plug sparks, which ignites the mix of air and fuel. It causes the explosion that forces the piston outward again, so the piston moves down the length of the cylinder. It's this force that provides the rotational force to the crank shaft that ultimately makes the car go. As the crank shaft turns, it pushes the piston rod as it rotates a one full rotation around that therefore makes the piston go back into the cylinder. For the fourth and final stroke of this process, this is the exhaust stroke. So this is when the exhaust valve opens and it allows the spent air fuel mixture to escape the cylinder. At the end of the stroke, the piston is as far into the cylinder as it can be. The whole process is set to repeat with the next intake stroke. And we do it all again. So let's finally get to the cams, because it's the cams that control the opening and closing of those intake and exhaust valves. The cams are on a cam shaft that ultimately receives its rotational power from the crank shaft. As the cams rotate, their surface forces their respective valves to open at just the right spot during that rotation, and then the valves will close again as the cams slopes away from the lever that is attached to the valves. The cams are positioned in such a way that they will always cause the valves to open at just the right part in the stroke process as the pistons are moving in and all of the cylinders, and then they will remain closed for the other three strokes of the four stroke process. Now, cams are used in all sorts of mechanical systems, not just cars, And the reason I even wanted to touch on these today is because again, next week, I should have a new episode up in which I'll talk about a theme park that used cams in its attractions. Very some alert to the gopher example I gave out, but far more complicated, and I think it's good to occasionally reflect on mechanical systems and get an understanding and appreciation for how humans were able to create one and and and create devices that could generate forces and also figure out ways to harness that force to do work, even if it meant having to convert one form of motion into another. It's really clever stuff. And with cams, it's also old stuff. There are illustrations of Chinese mechanical systems that used cams to convert rotational motion like that provided by a water wheel into reciprocating motion, so they've been around for a really long time. Anyway, I hope you found that interesting in this Tech Stuff Tidbits episode, and you know I'm looking forward to that episode for next week. Keep an ear out for it should be pretty fun and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H

Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from my Heart Radio. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and I'm an executive producer right here at the Heart Radio. And how the tech are you. I've got an upcoming episode with a special guest that I'm really excited about. And in that episode, I'm probably gonna talk a little bit about a system that uses cams. So I thought today's Tech Stuff Tidbits, I would actually talk about cams, what they are, what they do. This will be a true tidbits episode. It will not be a fifty minute tidbits episode. So we're just gonna look at cams and what they do. Now. And now, first of all, I am talking about mechanical cams mechanical systems, So when I say cams, I am not talking about cameras. So this is not about webcams or anything like that. That's a totally different thing. Instead, we're talking about components used in some mechanical systems for the purposes of generating a particular motion at a specific timing. So, to put it simply, cams are components in a mechanical system that convert ordinary rotational motion into something else typically into a reciprocating motion, a linear reciprocating motion, so it and up and down or in and out motion, if you want to think of it that way. Now, to talk about cams and how they work, let's let's really consider mechanical systems, and I'm going to really look at, you know, electro mechanical systems in particular. So first let's let's think about motors and electro magnets. And I know I talk about electro magnets a lot on this show, but as it turns out, there at the heart of a lot of different mechanical and electrical systems. So it comes with the territory, right. I'm sure most of us know that if you wrap a conductive wire around, say a core of iron, like a little iron rod, or the very simple version an iron nail. So you get some copper wire and you wrap several coils around a copper nail, and then you connect that wire to something that generates a current, like a battery. Then you get yourself an electro magnet. The electro magnet will have its own magnetic field, with its own magnetic north and magnetic south pole, and it will behave just like a permanent magnet would, which means if you bring the north end of your electro magnet near the south end of a permanent magnet, the two magnets will attract each other. If you bring the north end of your electro magnet near the north end of a permanent magnet, they will repel each other because opposite magnetic charges attract, and like magnetic charges or poles, if you prefer repel. Now, let's make things a bit more complicated. Let's say that we connect our electromagnet not to a battery which supplies direct current, meaning the current always flows in the same direction, but to a source of alternating current. So now the direction of current switches from one direction to the other, often at very high frequencies, and each time it switches, the magnetic field switches as well. So when the current flows in one direction, the north poles on one side of the electromagnet the south poles on the other, current switches directions those poles flip. So what was the north pole of the electromagnet is now the south pole, and vice versa. Now, if you brought this kind of electro magnet near a permanent magnets, poll doesn't matter which of the poles we're talking about. Your electro magnet would alternately attract and repel the permanent magnet because the poll would be flipping on your electromagnet. So some times it would be north to north and sometimes it would be north to south. All right, Now, let's imagine that we've got a permanent magnet. Let's say it's in the shape of a U. Okay, and the north pole is on the left tip of the U from our perspective, and the south pole is on the right tip of the U. This magnet does not move. It's in a fixed position. We call it a statter. It is stationary, so statters s T A T O R. In between these poles. In the center between the two we mount our electro magnet, which has no magnetic field. If we're not running a current through those coils, right, and our electro magnet is on an axle that can rotate, so the electromagnet can spin freely between the two poles of the permanent magnet. Now, if we run alternating current through our electro magnet at the right frequency, we can cause this electro magnet to rotate and keep rotating by flipping the direction of the current and thus the electro magnets magnetic field, and it will consistently push against the permanent magnets magnetic field on either side, because that field is not going to move right. The permanent magnets field is fixed. It's a statu our rotor the electro magnet. It's poles keep flipping so that it's consistently pushing against these magnetic fields, causing the electro magnet to rotate. So if you just time this perfectly, you can create this source of rotational force. Now, if we want to use a direct current, we could. You know, the problem with the direct current is unless you have a way of flipping the poles of your electro magnet, your electro magnet is just going to orient itself so that the opposite poles are attracted to the permanent magnet. Right, it'll move in a horizontal plane relative to our our permanent magnet's polls, and it won't go any further than that because it will be held in place by magnetic force. But if we use a structure called a commutator, which effectively flips the polarity of the electro magnets magnetic field, by changing how the electromagnet connects to the circuit that's providing the current as the electromagnet rotates, then you have essentially the same effect as if you had connected the electro magnet to an alternating current. There's more to it than that, but we've already spent enough time here, and I've done other episodes where I've talked about commutators and how they work. Now, the point is that these motors, these electric motors, generate rotational force. But that's all they do, right. They can't they can't generate a different kind of force there. The way that they are designed mechanically means that they make things spin. They don't make things go up and down or anything like that. But rotational force can be useful for a lot of stuff. Like you know, a relatively simple use would be to drive an electric drill. The rotational force from the motor provides the drilling action you need. It's providing the rotational force to your drill. Bit. So there are legit uses, simple uses for the electric motor, but a lot of mechanical systems often require other types of motion, not just rotational. So to accomplish that we have to get a little creative. We have to think of ways to convert rotational force generated by the electric motor into something else, and that's kind of where cams can come in. So a cam rotates on the axis of a shaft that could be driven by something like an electric motor, So it's getting rotational force from some part of the mechanical system. And a cam on a shaft is frequently and a regularly shaped object. It can be sort of like an eccentric wheel is a very frequent example. So imagine you have a wheel. Let's start with a perfect circle. Just imagine a perfect circle on your mind. Now imagine deforming this perfect circle a bit. Maybe parts along the circumference bulge out, making it a little more oblong, or maybe they dip inward a bit, so that you have still generally a circular shape, but it's not perfect anymore. There are parts of the circumference where it's a different shape. So by positioning cams at specific points along a shaft where they will make contact with other mechanical elements such as levers, you can translate rotational motion into something else, like reciprocating linear motion. So let me give you an example imagine you have a horizontal shaft that can rotate in a particular way. And this shaft, and in this example, we'll say it connects to an electric motor. So the electric motor is providing the rotational force turning the shaft, and you know, let's say it's a clockwise direction from our perspective. And then let's say that we have a cam positioned midway down the length of this shaft. It is permanently attached to the shaft. It will rotate along with the shaft. It is as as far as we're concerned, part of that shaft. This cam, let's say his egg shaped, so one side of the cam bulges outward compared to the rest of it. And positioned above this cam is a type of lever that will call a cam follower. So this follower is actually making contact with the surface of the cam itself. So if you're thinking about let's say a vinyl record or a wheel, it's making contact with the the outer surface of this wheel, like the edge of it. In other words, and the lever is attached to something else in this mechanical system. So let's say in our example, this lever which can move up and down is connected to a little mechanical gopher, and this gopher will pop out of a hole that's in some rundown and yet still vaguely charming theme park attraction at your local amusement park. So as the shaft rotates, the cam rotates too, because it's attached to the shaft, it's part of the shaft, and the bulging bit of this oblong cam's surface rises up to meet the lever, which means it pushes against the lever, pushing it upward. So the lever goes up, which in turn pushes our little mechanical gopher up out of the hole. The cam continues to rotate with the shaft, and so the bulging bit of this part of the cam is now sloping away from the lever, so the lever can actually start to come back down again. It's sliding along the surface of the cam as the cam rotates away, and you know, gravity just pulls our little gopher back down the hole. The full distance that the lever is able to travel due to how it connects to this cam is called the throw. That is the throw of our cam follower. Now the cam followers don't have to rely purely on gravity to move back down. In fact, that would be a very bad design because over time the leaver could start to stick in the up position. Our gopher might not ever go back down into its hole. It just stays up there, which is just another reminder of how this park isn't the same as it was when you were a kid. No, I made myself sad. We'll tell you what. We're gonna take a quick break. When it come back, we'll get happy again. Okay, let's get back to our discussion about cams and and the example we were thinking about with the little gopher that can pop up and down based upon the rotation of this cam pushing against a lever. Again, you probably wouldn't just rely on gravity on these systems. You would probably have some other form of device that would ensure that the lever would return to uh it's full down position in this case, so we would probably have something like maybe a spring connected to this lever, so that when the cam is pushing against the lever, pushing it up, you know, moving the gopher up out of the whole. In the process, the lever is also compressing a spring, and as the cam's edge slopes away from the lever, allowing it to move back down again. The spring actually forces the lever to move back down towards the cams surface, so that you don't just have a gopher stuck out of its hole. Internal combustion engine cars use cams. In fact, they have a special shaft called the cam shaft that uses these to govern the intake and exhaust valves in the combustion engine. That's why I specifically say internal combustion engine cars. The cams in this case are used to to govern, or to control when an intake valve is open and when it's closed, and when the exhaust valve is open and when it's closed. You don't need those in an electric vehicle because you don't have the combustion uh cylinders. So let's talk about internal combustion engines and cams in those really quickly to kind of understand how cams are used in modern mechanical systems. So, an internal combustion engine burns a mixture of fuel and air inside fix cylinders. The energy generated from this combustion it's really an explosion, is used to push a piston outward. The piston, in turn provides power to the car's power train. Via a crankshaft and then in turn provides power to the wheels. The crankscheft also, by the way, provides rotational power for the actual camshaft. That's part of this system too. Will get to that. And all of this means that you can have your car go without having to do the flintstones thing and just use your feets. So the pistons connect to a crank cheft via piston rods. It's that connection that allows the reciprocating motion of the pistons, the in and out motion of the pistons as they move relative to the cylinders, into rotational motion for the shaft itself. These are really tricky things to talk about without the use of visual aids, but you know, just think that the up and down motion of the piston is connected via this rod to a shaft that can then rotate due to the up and down motion of the piston. All right, Now, let's talk about a four stroke engine because that will illustrate how this is all working and where the cams come involved. So when we say stroke, what we mean is one full travel of a piston, either inward into the cylinder or outward relative to the cylinder. So in is one stroke, out is another stroke, and internal combustion engines traditionally use four strokes, so those four strokes are intake. This is where a cylinder pulls in air, and it does this by opening the intake valve. As the piston is traveling outward from the cylinder, This draws air into the cylinder, kind of like if you were pulling the plunger back on a syringe. At the end of the stroke, the intake valve closes, which is absolutely critical. It has to close, and that seals the cylinder. You also get a mix of fuel that enters into the cylinder at this point, so in older cars that would come from a carburetor, in modern vehicles from the fuel injection system. The next stroke, the piston is moving back inward relative to the cylinder, and this stroke is called compression because the piston, which is you know, snugly set in the cylinder so nothing can escape along the sides of the piston. As it moves back into the cylinder, the piston compresses this mixture of air and fuel that has entered into the cylinder. At the end of this stroke, the piston is as far into the cylinder as it goes, and both intake and exhaust valves have to be closed, right, because if either valve were open, then that would mean that you couldn't compress the mixture. The mixture would be forced out of the cylinder because one of the valves had opened, So these valves have to be shut. The next stroke is combustion. This is when the spark plug sparks, which ignites the mix of air and fuel. It causes the explosion that forces the piston outward again, so the piston moves down the length of the cylinder. It's this force that provides the rotational force to the crank shaft that ultimately makes the car go. As the crank shaft turns, it pushes the piston rod as it rotates a one full rotation around that therefore makes the piston go back into the cylinder. For the fourth and final stroke of this process, this is the exhaust stroke. So this is when the exhaust valve opens and it allows the spent air fuel mixture to escape the cylinder. At the end of the stroke, the piston is as far into the cylinder as it can be. The whole process is set to repeat with the next intake stroke. And we do it all again. So let's finally get to the cams, because it's the cams that control the opening and closing of those intake and exhaust valves. The cams are on a cam shaft that ultimately receives its rotational power from the crank shaft. As the cams rotate, their surface forces their respective valves to open at just the right spot during that rotation, and then the valves will close again as the cams slopes away from the lever that is attached to the valves. The cams are positioned in such a way that they will always cause the valves to open at just the right part in the stroke process as the pistons are moving in and all of the cylinders, and then they will remain closed for the other three strokes of the four stroke process. Now, cams are used in all sorts of mechanical systems, not just cars, And the reason I even wanted to touch on these today is because again, next week, I should have a new episode up in which I'll talk about a theme park that used cams in its attractions. Very some alert to the gopher example I gave out, but far more complicated, and I think it's good to occasionally reflect on mechanical systems and get an understanding and appreciation for how humans were able to create one and and and create devices that could generate forces and also figure out ways to harness that force to do work, even if it meant having to convert one form of motion into another. It's really clever stuff. And with cams, it's also old stuff. There are illustrations of Chinese mechanical systems that used cams to convert rotational motion like that provided by a water wheel into reciprocating motion, so they've been around for a really long time. Anyway, I hope you found that interesting in this Tech Stuff Tidbits episode, and you know I'm looking forward to that episode for next week. Keep an ear out for it should be pretty fun and I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H