[Beowulf] A cluster of Arduinos

[Prentice Bisbal]

On 01/11/2012 09:03 PM, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
> The whole purpose of PC's is that they are generic to use. 

That is also the purpose of the Arduino. That's why they open-sourced
it's hardware design.
> I remember  
> how in past decision taking bought low clocked junk for big price -
> much against the wish of the sysadmins who wanted a PC for every  
> student exclusively. Outdated slow junk is not interesting
> to students. Now you and i might like that CPU as it's under $1, but  
> to them it's just 70Mhz, factor 500 slower than their home PC single  
> core
> is. What impresses is if you got something that can beat their own  
> machine at home.
>

Wrong. What impresses students is teaching something they didn't already
know, or showing them how to do something new. Using baking soda and
vinegar to build a volcano, is very low-tech, but it still impresses
students of all ages (even in this modern Apple i-everything world) and
it's done with ingredients just about everyone already has in their
kitchen.

Show them sodium acetate crystallizing out of a supersaturated solution,
and their heads practically explode. Also very low-tech.

--
Prentice