The weirdest way to add 1 + 1

The computer has arrived

Welcome back everybody! If you’ve not read my previous blog yet, you should check that out first. Today, you will get to see the completed half adder and what it can do. Without further ado, here it is:

Hot Wheels Half Adder

The XOR gate is circled in black and the AND gate is circled in white. The launchers connected with a black band are 1 input. If you look at this diagram, you may see some similarities.

Half Adder logic gate diagram

The symbol on the top is an XOR gate and the symbol on the bottom is an AND gate. As you can see, inputs A and B go through both of these gates. On its own, this can only add 1 + 1, and 1 + 0, which is not that useful, but it can be part of something greater. We can chain together a half adder and a full adder to add 2 digit binary numbers, like so:

Chaining together a half adder and a full adder to add bigger numbers

Although I will not be building this with Hot Wheels, it’s definitely doable, but it would require a lot more space, time, and materials.

Here’s the Half Adder in action:

Hot Wheels Half Adder

The computer itself was really finicky so it took a lot of effort to get a perfect shot like this one.

After this experience of building a Hot Wheels half adder I am really intrigued by mechanical computers because it’s a really fun way to understand how real computers work. So stay tuned for more cool computers and unique logic gates.