Sumando números con una calculadora de agua.

Resumen

This paper describes a homemade artefact (the "Water Calculator") built by the author as an educational tool to disseminate some basic principles of operation of the computers. The apparatus is made of pipes and funnels, and works with water flow. The circuit of pipes transfers binary information through the flow or the absence of water. Three funnels that may turn around an axis act as AND/XOR logic gates. The calculator is a 2-bits adder processor that computes the sum of two numbers from 0 to 3. It is a very simple machine that shows at macroscopic size and very visually some concepts of computation. The "Water Calculator" was exhibited at the Fair of Science and Technology 2004 in Murcia, Spain. Its look and funny operation raised great interest in the public