Down Circuits Lane

Another breaking of the light this morning. Unfortunately, the truth was disappointing.

As I was sitting through the lecture on Thevenin's and Norton's equivalent circuits, an idea (or maybe I should say the splintering of an idea) slapped me in the face. Up to this time I had understood Thevenin's theorem vaguely as some truly beautiful technique of analysis that allowed one to simplify any complicated circuit by replacing it with an equivalent circuit. Somewhere in this process, all the mess of the former would be replaced by the simplicity of the latter, and the problem solver would never have to stoop to adding up individual currents (in the original circuit), analyzing specific branches, etc.

What was the shock, then, when I discovered that Thevenin's forces one to dredge through the entire circuit, starting from a case voltage or resistance between two specified points. The magic was gone! I was dumbfounded by the menial nature of this once revered concept. It was as if the heavens had touched the earth, only to trip and fall crashing to the ground... or something like that.

Ok, so, yes, I didn't post every day in January.

I underestimated two things:

1. The degree to which staying on the LeTourneau campus is conducive to intellectually recreational thought.

2. The amount of time necessary to invest in such an activity.

So, in order to make up for not posting anything for a while, I will leave you with a puzzling problem which probably has a very obvious solution.

Can a digital circuit be made to produce random numbers (withstanding any current human capacity to produce a pattern through analysis)?

Hint: Take a look at the Linear Feedback Shift Register.