3 ms·
Apparently, one of the commonly used Japanese words for a logic gate flip-flop (a beach shoe?), can be written as "bird clapper" (one of those bamboo water foun
by kurthr 4y ago
Apparently, one of the commonly used Japanese words for a logic gate flip-flop (a beach shoe?), can be written as "bird clapper" (one of those bamboo water fountain features you see in gardens).
I think this comes from なるこ in the original text, but my Japanese is minimal.
That sounds just sort of non-intuitive, but when reading a patent where the accepted US filing used the word "bird clapper" every time a type of logic gate was intended made reading it initially incomprehensible, then bizarre, and finally hilarious.
I've briefly looked at USPT and although I can find references to such phrases in patents, the one I'm looking for appears to have been thankfully fixed.
- thaumasiotes 4y agoThose are called sozu. (添水; might mean something like "water accumulators".) Sozu and clappers are both known by the more generic term of deer scare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_scare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_scare https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/bam-boo https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/bam-boo But clappers appear to be clappers, not a water feature: https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/naruko https://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/naruko
- userbinator 4y agoThe mechanical analogue of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_oscillator#Pearson–Anson_oscillator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxation_oscillator#Pearson–...
- thaumasiotes 4y agoI can see how the sozu is analogous to such an oscillator... but sozu aren't called clappers. The energy a clapper uses comes from you shaking it. There's no buildup and no release.