Question

Vladimir Lukyanov used this kind of material to build a computer for solving differential equations, which was mass produced in the Soviet Union until the 1980s. Bill Phillips, the namesake of the Phillips curve, made a computer (15[1])from this material that performs macroeconomic simulations called the MONIAC (“MAWN-ee-ack”). In a video, Steve Mould uses this material to make a half adder circuit, whose gates (15[1])work like a certain device (15[2])made by Pythagoras that punishes greed. Terence Tao showed that this kind of material can form into a self-replicating computer that eventually “blows up” in a 2014 paper contributing to a certain (*) Millennium Prize problem. Most lab-on-a-chip designs use channels that manipulate tiny amounts of this general type of material, (10[1])in a technique called “micro-[this word]-ics”. For 10 points, electricity flowing in a circuit is equated with what kind of material in the hydraulic analogy? ■END■

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