It is depressing that for most collections of random scavenged junk, even if very hi-tech, the most complex thing you can build out of it is generally “doorstop” or “art” (which doesn’t particularly interest me)
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Junkyard engineering/mad-maxing reminds me of a weird branch of number theory/combinatorics called Ramsey theory, which is about questions like "how many randomly selected people do you need in a room for 2 people to share a birthday" (~22 as it happens)
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Mutatis mutandis, how many randomly broken radios, based on typical failure modes, do you need in order to assemble 1 functional radio out of scavenged parts?
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This is the simplest sort of homogeneous case. Ramsey theory covers a lot of such "structure appearing out of disorder via enabling conditions" questions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey_theory …
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Heteregenous case: how many randomly broken bits of junk from from a particular subset of the economic production web do you need to assemble an arbitrary design in the combinatorial space. Eg... a 6-wheel vehicle with a snowplow attached?
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I'm interested in synthesis side... what *can* you realize within the design space induced by the parts universe of a junkyard? Sort of like the Boydian snowmobile question (snowmobile = skis + motorcycle parts). How quickly does the expressivity of a junkspace increase with n?
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our makerspace had a freecycling 'program' (bin) of parts and things you'd leave or take freely but I'm not sure that really helps you source parts. you could probably find cheap / free old camera lenses to salvage
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Yeah this is/was Tim Anderson’s “Heirloom Technology” column in early MAKE which he described as a “reverse Peace Corps” - learning/replicating/propagating more bygone or energy-efficient techniques.
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I'm reminded of the "rat rod" culture as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_rod
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There was that scene in Apollo 13
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