Sinking heat

this is for any of those of you with any computer/engineering background. What would be the best way of cooling a brain-sized computer inside of an android, preferably without harming aesthetics or the structure of the skull.

Presumably if they have such high-grade computing technology, they have also managed to shrink cooling fans or refrigerators to such a small size.

Various ways you could do it. Probably liquid cooling and run your coolant to radiators in the torso or limbs, is easiest.

Aluminum skull to dissipate heat, with Vein-like structures that run water between the outside of the skull, down to a refrigerator somewhere in the abdomen where it's cooled and then back up again.

A note: in the situation of cooling something, you don't want to use any sort of refrigerator. What a refrigerator does is it acts as a heat pump, which pulls heat out of one place and puts it into another while generating waste heat in the process. You want to just let it radiate off or heat exchange with atmosphere.

Hm. In hindsight, unless this happens to be plot-relevant in some manner, I don't see why it matters. Most of the time, when an android comes out, most audience members aren't thinking "ZOMG THAT THING IS SO FAKE HOW ARE THEY COOLING THE COMPUTER BRAIN?!"

edited 13th Feb '12 9:51:07 PM by Flyboy

The main character is overclocking her own brain illegally, the heat problem is going to be a plot point later on. Usually, in the absence of such modification, this wouldn't be a problem.

Copper ould dissipate heat better than aluminum, IIRC (although it has other downsides, such as being heavy and malleable). Just have pipes pump the liquid coolant past the brain and out into a, well, heat sink—something made of a heat-conductive material (like copper) shaped to maximize surface area (hence the blades on computer heat sinks).

Mm. Interesting.

Well, I don't know, technically. You could always handwave it, which would be more convenient for the plot.

Put the heat sink on her rear end.

Just think of the puns.

NOTE: Mostly j/k

edited 13th Feb '12 10:24:44 PM by SalFishFin

Actually, if you want it to be aesthetically fine and your cyborg buddy is okay drinking some extra water, then you can do liquid water heating combined with sweat to cool it down. We have microscopic water cooling piping today so in this indeterminate future of yours, it could already be fully developed.

Wait, cyborg or android? Because if an android that drinks popsi-cola...

Android(Gynoid in this case), though the main character was human once(it's complicated).

[edit]When I say Android, I mean a ridiculously humanoid robot. As in, synthetic muscles, a synaptic system, and actual(fake) skin.

edited 15th Feb '12 5:39:19 PM by GlassPistol

Well drinking water would be fine and sweating would be fine right?