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Micro chain drive - photo
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Extremely cool. MEMS (micro electro-mechanical systems) are extremely neat, and are displacing a number of traditional devices. They've already dominated consumer level accelerometers and gyroscopes, MEMS microphones are making their way into the market, and things like MEMS clock sources for microchips are also available. iPhones have been using MEMS oscillators for their processors for a while now. It's basically like a little tuning fork that vibrates in the MHz range, which can be used to derive the processor clock. What's really cool is a tiny little bit of helium, in single digit percentage concentrations, can absolutely trash the frequency at which that MEMS system oscillates. This will crash your phone (temporarily). If you expose your iPhone to helium and it stops working, you have to let it air out for a few days and it'll start working again.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/11986/ip...rgic-to-helium