Power Spring Slinky

The Power Spring is a classic toy and seemingly simple, but listen to this… The Power Spring was invented by the naval engineer Richard James in the 1940s. It’s been used in NASA physics experiments! The Power Spring is a helical spring that stretches and compresses with the aid of gravity and its own momentum. It travels particularly well down stairs, moving end over end like a strange little creature! The Power Spring has even been used as a radio aerial in times of war and as a teaching aid in the classroom. What will you do with yours? Whether it’s simply your favorite toy, a gift for a loved-one or something even more educational, you can be sure that you’ll enjoy your Power Spring to the nth degree. The simple things are always the best! This item has been in the warehouse for some time and the box is quite tatty. Product unused.

Moore's Law

Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware, in which the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years. It is often incorrectly quoted as a doubling of transistors every 18 months, as David House, an Intel Executive, gave that period to chip performance increase. The actual period was about 20 months.

The capabilities of many digital electronic devices are strongly linked to Moore's law: processing speed, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras. All of these are improving at (roughly) exponential rates as well. This has dramatically increased the usefulness of digital electronics in nearly every segment of the world economy. Moore's law precisely describes a driving force of technological and social change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The trend has continued for more than half a century and is not expected to stop until 2015 or later

The law is named after Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, who described the trend in his 1965 paper. The paper noted that number of components in integrated circuits had doubled every year from the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958 until 1965 and predicted that the trend would continue "for at least ten years". His prediction has proved to be uncannily accurate, in part because the law is now used in the semiconductor industry to guide long-term planning and to set targets for research and development. This fact would support an alternative view that the "law" unfolds as a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the goal set by the prediction charts the course for realized capability.