EEVblog 1466 - Stanford Solar Power at Nightime BUSTED

[thm_w]

Solus infrared heaters are still being sold (fun fact: BEV car makers are installing these kind of heaters in cars to heat them more efficiently

Because they've already been around for decades, that was the point, that they weren't doing anything new and completely exaggerating expected power savings. You can find FIR products from the 80's.
The impossible claims on their KS page were called out and the project was suspended: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/koleda/solus-the-most-efficient-radiator-in-the-world/

The technology here isn't the issue (FIR or TEG), its how they spin the results and make wild claims.

[KeithBrown]

A day after your video, the latest "Just have a think" video came to my intention. From the title I thought it was about the same research. But it is not. His video is about a much more useful approach: cooling PV panels to increase their efficiency and lifetime and then use the captured heat for something else. He links to a countrywoman of yours, Dave, Engineering with Rosie ( where she visits a rooftop in Perth.
My suggestion to the discussion here is to think about using TEG devices after heat is concentrated. As we all should know the effectiveness of a TEG is much improved by temperature difference. Whether enough heat could be concentrated to drive a grid tie inverter obviously depends on a lot  of factors, so I leave it as an exercise for the student!

[floobydust]

How will this cure dumbness in academic research?  Think of the time and money wasted.
I argued with a fellow engineer about the benefits of looking for photons at night. He says it might highlight some previously unknown mechanisms for energy generation, and I couldn't stop laughing. Research into flea power, it's never going to be powering anything of any use. Let's spend $1,000 on hardware to power an LED solar garden light at night?

P.S.- OT TEGs we use here in remote areas, natural gas flame from a gas well to get a few volts at many amperes, then boost-converter to make 24VDC.
In space probes/rovers radioisotope TEG supply power with Pu-238 heat source.
Back in the 1970's greens were furious about space probes "spewing out radiation" in space, it would piss off the aliens. Ref. Space: 1999 Voyager's Return

I think Stanford et al. should watch some old sci-fi for ideas on new useless research to do.

[nctnico]

How will this cure dumbness in academic research?  Think of the time and money wasted.

Facepalms, silly laughs and hyperboles going at the opposite direction certainly won't help. At some point people will see that 'publish to survive' isn't working. Probably the best way is to simply ignore silly ideas and let the market do it's job where it comes to investing money into an idea or not. Even if an idea fails, lessons that have value in the future are learned.

[floobydust]

It's that: "let the market do it's job" - the magical autopilot will steer things. People believe the "efficient market" hypothesis is true, and here we are seeing it's just another failed theory from economists, semiconductors and green energy included. We're heading into an energy crisis that is the only negative-feedback loop for the autopilot. Hint: it's too late to pull up.

Investors, governments and academic leaders understand little about technology, no training in energy and the Laws of Thermodynamics.
What they do know is "an ounce of image is worth a pound of performance". Look at solar roadways, hydrogen power etc. these are fantasy technologies that a back of the napkin calculation by an engineer will show are completely unrealistic yet people want to believe will save the world.

What are the products of a university? Ideas, intellectual gold - none of which can be measured or quantified. Entirely intangible. For the ivy league, they have nothing but an image to maintain. Universities in Canada aren't making money, massive funding is needed, tuition was recently doubled again. The gap between a thesis or other research paper to a viable product is a million miles. This is a huge problem I think.

[nctnico]

It isn't a problem. It has always been this way. Take Einstein's relativity theories for example. It has taken decades to prove these in experiments and even longer to find practical applications. Boolean and signal processing math where invented long before they could make circuits that allowed practical applications / implementations for these ideas.

The bottom line is: you can't go around saying that every idea that doesn't have an application and/or can be implemented in an economic way right now is utterly useless and axe it. And there will be iterations / evolutions as well. Look at how mobile phone communication systems have evolved over the past 30 years.

[bdunham7]

The bottom line is: you can't go around saying that every idea that doesn't have an application and/or can be implemented in an economic way right now is utterly useless and axe it.

I don't think anyone here is against fundamental scientific research nor would most reasonable people demand that an immediate practical use be in mind for experiments in physics.  But that's not what this paper was about.  There's no new science at all that I can see and the paper is largely eloquent bullshit about the practical benefits, either hoping nobody notices the 50mW thing or hoping that they suffer from the delusion that a sort of Moore's law applies to everything and that number will increase by orders of magnitude with a little fine tuning (it won't).  The biggest improvement that could be made to this project is to make a container around the outside of the warm end of the TEG and fill it with horse manure every evening.  It's all horseshit anyway.

[nctnico]

The bottom line is: you can't go around saying that every idea that doesn't have an application and/or can be implemented in an economic way right now is utterly useless and axe it.

I don't think anyone here is against fundamental scientific research nor would most reasonable people demand that an immediate practical use be in mind for experiments in physics.  But that's not what this paper was about.  There's no new science at all that I can see and the paper is largely eloquent bullshit about the practical benefits, either hoping nobody notices the 50mW thing or hoping that they suffer from the delusion that a sort of Moore's law applies to everything and that number will increase by orders of magnitude with a little fine tuning (it won't).  The biggest improvement that could be made to this project is to make a container around the outside of the warm end of the TEG and fill it with horse manure every evening.  It's all horseshit anyway.

And thus not worthy to spend any time on. As I wrote earlier: ideas like the paper this topic is about are best left alone. Debunking it is like wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig enjoys the attention.

[sandalcandal]

Just my take here, not trying to assert anything as matter of fact:

Academic Research
Due to bureaucracy and the primarily non-commercial means (grants, student fees) funding/resources are obtained by academic institutions, the path of least resistance which direction tends towards is chasing clout and "trends" rather than objectively "practical" research unless you have some sort of "visionary" leadership. It takes balls to take risks in anything and talent to make it pay off; current academia seems to attract the more conservative, pedestrian sort whilst the more ambitious (and capable) tend to get sucked into industry very fast; when speaking about engineering disciplines. I think other areas/subjects tend to do decently in terms of a "productive" academic research, e.g. pure physics, astronomy, mathematics, areas which which don't have much of a commercial industrial sector. I found the physics school filed with "better" researchers than the engineering school. I've definitely seen the sort behaviour Nominal Animal describes while involved in academic research as a student and it was part of what turned me off from academia.

I don't think doing research that has no "practical" value is a bad thing. "Blue skies research" is definitely important and worth it in itself to satisfy human curiosity. Fundamental scientific advances are of massive importance but often not "practical". However, I think the sort of research people are upset about here isn't that, it's "clickbait" research which brings little new knowledge to the table but plays off topical buzzwords and written as though everyday life changes are "just around the corner" which in turn leads people to feel a disappointment and a distrust of science and research as a whole when things go about as well as you'd expect them to. I feel like a lot of people, particularly annoyed people on the internet, are at this stage of disillusionment with what could be called "low quality pop sci".

Back on the topic of research itself. Particularly for research that IS directly applicable to "real life" (meaning the industrial and consumer economy) I think this is the sort of thing that is best handled through commercial means, be it some start-up or super corporation like Nvidia. If news of a new technology isn't coming from  commercial venture then you already know it very likely not something that has practical value. Not to say that every thing that IS commercially pursued has practical value either (particularly in startup land). I think the reality is in the socio-economic machine of today, the available resources and best path to "real life" practical application is going to be found almost entirely in the commercial sector. What you tend to see at best is an academic research group producing a proof-of-concept then trying to spin out a startup but the skills and attitudes required to survive in academia and often very different those required in business. More often though academics/universities will just obtain patents in the hope someone will magically come along and turn their idea into a commercial success for them now that all the "hard work" is done and they can live off the royalties There was a "well regarded" but somewhat eccentric lecturer at my university that literally said "Why would you want to join a start up or industry? Now that the theory has been proven, anybody can implement it." Which sums up well the sort of hubris often found in academia.

I think academics is ideally suited to blue skies, and "pure" scientific research because there isn't really anywhere else it can be done (apart the hobby eccentric wealthy as it historically was), despite clear flaws in the way resources are awarded. Anything research that is actually "practical" will find it's way quickly into the commercial sector. This night time solar project gives a short term PR hit with the general public for the researchers but isn't helpful to reputation of science research and doesn't seem to have any actual scientific merit. I agree with the sentiment that these sorts of "click bait" research projects without scientific merit are somewhat degenerative.

[sandalcandal]

Debunking videos
I don't think it's a bad thing to be calling out research claims or directions like this where claimed applications and relevance is being stretched quite far. It's not directly helpful but making noise, even if it's somewhat far off in youtube land and not in academia, helps push against this "irresponsible" hyping of less than ground breaking research. Particularly when there's exists "truly" impactful research going albeit often very esoteric; this is where science educators have immense value.

The research itself is overhyped and bunk, not a good reflection of what scientific and technological research can be. I noticed on other places people calling out Dave for pointing out the research lacks merit and calling on him to not go "debunking" science rather than calling on science PR to be less sensationalist. Shooting the messenger it feels like? Criticism is important but then again the criticism itself may or may not have merit.

Deep, fundamental scientific research which pushes the fore font of human knowledge is (often) far from application and even further from everyday life commercialisation. This is the sort of research that is "only" practical to conduct in pure academic blue skies research. This is the sort of research I think we should be celebrating and institutions should be doing (and certainly are doing) but often this is the sort of highly esoteric research which takes knowledge as well as talent to take such advanced topics and to explain them to an everyday person. If you only consume 24-hr news and mass media, you'll rarely find this sort of content. This is what makes "good" scientific communicators invaluable particularly those that are also subject matter experts e.g. Sabine Hossenfelder.


Even content by subject "enthusiasts" such as The Limiting Factor are leagues better than mass media "news" outlets.

These channels are able to publicise new research whilst being critical ("sceptical") but not dismissive.

"Skeptic" Channels like Thunderfool or Non-sense Skeptic are symbiotic with and equally as low merit as sensationalist pop sci which is to say prioritising emotional appeals over facts or scientific thinking. Example A, example B and there are more I have posted in the past. I guess being outraged at things just gets some people off

I OK with "debunking" as long as it's actually done in a critical and informative manner and has "merit" e.g. Sabine and not as some blind, arse-headed e.g. Non-sense Skeptic. I think Dave generally tries his best to try keep to the facts and only say what's "fair". Also good he does "rebunking" videos like the Electric bus one to show critical thinking from the other end.

[sandalcandal]

Facepalms, silly laughs and hyperboles going at the opposite direction certainly won't help. At some point people will see that 'publish to survive' isn't working. Probably the best way is to simply ignore silly ideas and let the market do it's job where it comes to investing money into an idea or not. Even if an idea fails, lessons that have value in the future are learned.

Problem is there isn't really a "market mechanism" for fundamental scientific research. The more fundamental it is, the further it likely is from a realisable commercial product yet also the more likely it will be of important to many things (science and beyond) in the future. Fundamental science and blue skies research unfortunately doesn't really fit directly into the economic machine. Publish or perish is currently the closest thing to "objective" allocation of resources. I really don't think there's any other way for allocation of resources apart from some trusted director that understands what's "good" and "bad" or someone obscenely wealthy investing in whatever piques their interest.

It's not completely broken thankfully, the usually limited amount of money and very high entry barriers means corruption isn't a rampant problem (I think?). There are enough "good" people that we get projects like LIGO, LHC and all the cool stuff NASA and ESA do.

[sandalcandal]

And thus not worthy to spend any time on. As I wrote earlier: ideas like the paper this topic is about are best left alone. Debunking it is like wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig enjoys the attention.

Unlike the scam "startups" and snake oil products that Dave sometimes covers where they love to wallow in any publicity they can get. I think going after sensationalist research papers or even silly government projects is useful since these are tied to non-ethereal organisations. If this paper gets enough bad press I can guarantee that pressure will be on in whatever Stanford school to stop/slow funding, if someone with standing in the academic community came out with a position similar to Dave it would be "cooled-off" with almost certainty. A historical example of an "anti hype publication" would be Artificial Neural Networks in the 1950s and 60s which were massively hyped until the publication of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert's Perceptrons: An introduction to computational geometry which greatly cooled off research in the neural networks until many years later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_abandonment_of_connectionism_in_1969). You can look up the first "AI winter". [Was this a good thing or a bad thing?]

[Best video I could quickly find summing it up]

I think we also see a type of survivorship bias. We only see the solar roads ways which actually happen. We have no idea how many times local city councils have had the idea brought up to them and how many times those ideas have been shot down. To be honest, on a global scale we don't really see that many, and those that do happen seem more along the lines of "public art" projects rather than intending to be practical. With the number of small local governments in the world that have the available funding to undertake a mini solar path project, I don't think we see that many and I don't think it's a realistic expectation that just Dave or anyone else's combined campaigns are going to make it so there are ZERO solar roads in existence. It's hard to have a quantified let alone objective measure of how well solar roads have be suppressed by Dave making videos on the subject.

To an extent, we should be proud there aren't more solar roads in existence.

[bsfeechannel]

A historical example of an "anti hype publication" would be Artificial Neural Networks in the 1950s and 60s which were massively hyped until the publication of Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert's Perceptrons: An introduction to computational geometry which greatly cooled off research in the neural networks until many years later (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter#The_abandonment_of_connectionism_in_1969). You can look up the first "AI winter". [Was this a good thing or a bad thing?]

Hype seems to be a problem with debunkers. You hyped, you're dead, in their view. If you maintain a low profile, the merit of your research is not questioned.

The AI winter seems to be a good example. Because of hype, debunkers managed to end serious research. It turns out that AI is not snake oil: it's the key force behind technologies employed by Google, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix, Siri, Alexa, or any mundane OCR.

[tszaboo]

It isn't a problem. It has always been this way. Take Einstein's relativity theories for example. It has taken decades to prove these in experiments and even longer to find practical applications. Boolean and signal processing math where invented long before they could make circuits that allowed practical applications / implementations for these ideas.

The bottom line is: you can't go around saying that every idea that doesn't have an application and/or can be implemented in an economic way right now is utterly useless and axe it. And there will be iterations / evolutions as well. Look at how mobile phone communication systems have evolved over the past 30 years.

On the other hand, we can also look at other scientific research, that the mere existence, or the wrong interpretation, or the wrong test methodology led to catastrophic results. I can list a few:
- Diesel engine has less CO2 emissions -> leading to Europe advocating for Diesel and ruining the environment with NOx
- IQ tests performed in the 1920 on different racial groups -> interpreted politically leading to... you know what.
- Dutch government doing test on road wear with incorrect test methodology -> taxing cars based on weight, leading to people buying smaller and less safe cars.
- Tabaco research results
- Food pyramid
- Lobotomy as a regular practice because it calms people down (yes, there were scientific research papers on that)

There are some research that we have to fight back against, and we have to do interpretations, and those interpretations have to be harsh. Otherwise we run into problems that a politician sees this (or more likely, a lobbyist gets to them) and interprets it as "it generates power during the night, which is a problem with the current systems". Fast forward, and you will only be able to get government incentive for your installation, if it works during the night. Because some CEO thought it would be nice to get an edge on the competition and bribes someone to do just that.

[EEVblog]

SiliconWizard and floobydust highlighted the problem I have with this kind of "research".

I know from experience how difficult it is to get any kind of support for genuinely new, useful research.  Those with their hands on the purse strings need publicity.  Here in Finland, they prefer to (exclusively) support research that is already being done elsewhere.  Not to be first, or support or compete with others, but only so that they can say that the research they support is at the forefront of science.

Because the only metric used is the number of publications in high-ranking academic papers, the quality of said papers is in steep, continuous decline.  Not only are an increasing fraction of papers being shown to be incorrect or invalid later, but even the experiments they claim to be based on are increasingly difficult to duplicate.  Even in physical sciences, more than a quarter of papers end up being retracted or later shown incorrect.  (In humanist "sciences", that fraction is already over half the papers; with many authors forming clusters that only refer to each other.  Meta-analysis of the literature, especially directed graphs of the citations, shows a very dire picture of the "science".)

The experiment/demonstration in this featured article is laughable.  They didn't even use a standard commercial panel, only a tiny 153 cm² one (that's less than five inches square, or something like 9 cm by 17 cm).  There is no merit in this paper, only very good writing (as in how the statements are constructed to evoke emotions in the readers; psychology).

If this kind of crap is selected as a featured article, consider what kind of "scientific furor" would be raised if someone bought a commercial photovoltaic panel, say one or two square meters (I forgot what the size of the individual panels Dave uses is), and then combined one of the commercially available solid-state battery technologies, by laminating a few cells on the underside of the panel, forming a combined solar cell battery.  Pick a chemistry that is more or less safe (chemically, so avoid carcinogens and such) and benefits from the heat from the solar cell (say, adding mobility of charge carriers).  You'll probably need a budget of say USD 1000 to get all you need, but it's all commercially available, and you only need to do a couple of days of research.  Then, find yourself an accomplished scientific writer –– the ones at Stanford that helped those guys are seriously good, just look at how not only is each sentence in the paper quite well constructed, but the entire paper has the classical structure, with all weaknesses visible, but cleverly side-stepped; consider the "orders of magnitude claim"! –– and become the sole author of a future featured paper in a leading journal.

That battery chemistry does not even need to be at all efficient, only good enough that you can show "orders of magnitude" improvement over the article in this thread, and gush about the rapid evolution in the technology and science in this field.  (That is important, because that gives you the place to use the manipulative sentences and wording that will get you research grants in the future.  The idea is not to put yourself at the forefront, but show that this is the field where grants should be directed at.)

See?  There is almost nothing "scientific" about this.  It is pure human social gaming, pure psychology, using already commercially available and perfectly well known technologies, to push a narrative about "science".  It is, in a very real sense, a parody of real science.

Now, if somebody actually did some materials research on how to combine the solar cell with light weight solid-state battery technology that took advantage of the couple of degrees Kelvin/Celsius difference between the panel and ambient air – more during the daytime, so perhaps an opportunity in the charging (high difference) – discharging (low difference) chemistry? –, that would be interesting.  However, that kind of paper is exactly the kind that goes unpublished or ignored for years, because it takes sense and intelligence to realize its potential.  If the University realizes its worth before publication, they'll partner with a company, so that instead of publishing the tech, they license the technology for a high fee instead.

It's just like the situation with patents in most fields.  They were intended to ensure the invention will eventually reach the markets, but in actuality, are used for the exact opposite purpose: to hinder competition in the field for as long as possible.  Most patents nowadays are never used in actual products, and are only taken to be used as a litigation threat against competitors!

Post of the week 

[EEVblog]

The research itself is overhyped and bunk, not a good reflection of what scientific and technological research can be. I noticed on other places people calling out Dave for pointing out the research lacks merit and calling on him to not go "debunking" science rather than calling on science PR to be less sensationalist. Shooting the messenger it feels like? Criticism is important but then again the criticism itself may or may not have merit.

For those interested, there are two things that triggered this video (also for the person asking before whether I was debunking the media hype or the paper, the answer is essentially both).
It got my attention because of the media hype, which is course any engineer with two brain cells to rub together knows that energy harvestign in this application is pointless bunk. So I read the paper to see if it had some research merit. Like for example, researching a new TEG material and they just happened to be using this PV example. If that was the case then I would have stopped there and never had done the video because at least there is some merit to the development that can lead to other things.
But of course it wasn't, it was using a COTS TEG with the sole "research" being the actual application of said COTS TEG and PV panel for the stated application is reducing or eliminating battery storage. Again any engineer with a few brain cells to rub together knows this is a just waste of time. And tyhen throw in it's Stanford and that the paper got highlighted status. So for me that was the double (or triple) whammy that warranted the video. It was literally solar roadways level of pointlessness.

Both solar roadways and this project are doing demonstrably the same level of pointless thing. In fact I think SR might actually have more merit than this.
It's just the SR raised money and went viral and this one was a paper that wetn kinda viral.
You could also equally compare with Waterseer which was also backed by a pretigious university.

[EEVblog]

The bottom line is: you can't go around saying that every idea that doesn't have an application and/or can be implemented in an economic way right now is utterly useless and axe it.

I don't think anyone here is against fundamental scientific research nor would most reasonable people demand that an immediate practical use be in mind for experiments in physics.  But that's not what this paper was about.  There's no new science at all that I can see and the paper is largely eloquent bullshit about the practical benefits, either hoping nobody notices the 50mW thing or hoping that they suffer from the delusion that a sort of Moore's law applies to everything and that number will increase by orders of magnitude with a little fine tuning (it won't).  The biggest improvement that could be made to this project is to make a container around the outside of the warm end of the TEG and fill it with horse manure every evening.  It's all horseshit anyway.

And thus not worthy to spend any time on. As I wrote earlier: ideas like the paper this topic is about are best left alone. Debunking it is like wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig enjoys the attention.

But that's the trick, you don't get a say in what others spend their time on.
I enjoyed making the video and having a laugh, and for me that's all that matters. And it seems a lot of people had fun watching it. I don't care if the other pig likes the attention or if people laugh at me instead. I had fun and a laugh so I win regardless.
You don't have to like or think it's worthy of my time to make it, or anyones time to watch it, and that's just fine. But it's not your call on what others enjoy.
I think it's not worth your time to comment that it's not worth my time, but if you want to, go ahead, no problem.

[EEVblog]

Keysight has a new event featuring several 'Youtube' electronics content creators but much to my surprise, Dave / EEVblog isn't included. https://live.keysight.com/s/live-from-the-lab/home

I suspect that this more related to the fact that Keysight, in large parts, apparently does not give a rat's ass about non corporate customers anymore.
Also, ElectroBoom's Channel is huge, compared to the EEVBLOG, even Great Scott's channel is twice the size. I have to admit though i never heard about Curious Marc before now. And what TheSignalPath does with Testequipment is in a whole other league from what i know
So i would not blame this on any specific negativity. What was one Scope Month has become smaller and smaller over the years anyway. Also, was Dave's Giveaway ever explicitly advertised by Keysight at all? I always had the impression that this was more of a bone that's thrown to the australian community since the official Scope Month was not allowed.

I guess nctnico thinks this is some kind "own" for my types of videos? Why else would he bring this up in this thread?

In case anyone cares, I had never heard of this thing, so no, Keysight didn't approach me. First I heard of it was in an Electroboom video.
Keysight and other companies know that I don't do any sort of paid promotion, as in don't even bother asking. And this seems to be on the the level of doing actual work for Keysight (i..e producing content/attend this event and give a talk or something) rather than just a give-away for the benefit of our audience in return for an announcement video where they get promotion in return. So Keysight knew my answer was going to be no.

[Nominal Animal]

So you're telling me that only groundbreaking papers should be allowed to get published / coverage?

Define "groundbreaking".

I prefer the term "merit" (or "scientific merit"), defining it as "something deserving or worthy of recognition, analysis, or consideration".

Having somewhat a Popperian/critical rationalist bent, I personally find such merit in, for example,

• New theorems, extending existing theorems, and limiting/falsifying existing theorems (in specific contexts or situations)
• Verification or falsification of existing theorems via experimentation or simulation
• Verification or falsification of past experiments or simulations
• New or useful experiments that produce new and/or useful data
• Simulations that produce data that helps experimental research
• Simulations that help verify or falsify models used in said simulations, extending or limiting the applicable domain of said models

None of these include experiments suitable for a high-school physics class.  I see no scientific merit, no benefit to anyone from reading this article.

Using a thermoelectric generator to obtain, at night, 0.01% of the power available at daytime, is ridiculous.  Like I explained, this is best modeled as using a heatsink and a TEG as a ridiculously poor and inefficient energy storage; a battery alternative.

I can see why it was published, and perhaps even why it was a featured article in Applied Physics Letters 120.  It has nothing to do with physics or science or scientific merit, and everything to do with wording, language, and human psychology.  I despise that, just like I despise anything involving social gamesmanship, emotive manipulation, and lack of rationality in a professional context.

That anything like a replication, or a slightly boring result, does not deserve to exist?

That's opposite to what I've written.  Did you even read my posts, or just glanced at them to determine they are not to your liking?  Or are you perhaps desperately trying to construct something you can attack in my post, because some others agree with my assessment, and you hate that?

This is an incredibly ignorant, dismissive, shortsighted attitude.

What you described and refer to by "this" is not what I wrote, nor is it my attitude.

I do understand that you want to attack my person, because you find it difficult to point to anything specific in my post that you can rationally object to.

Sometimes a researcher needs to write a first paper to establish techniques for later research or to get acquainted by a topic.

Sure, I do that myself in a more relaxed form for all examples I post here and elsewhere; it is one of the 'scientific' tools any researcher has.  (You start with a thorough search across applicable literature, collate the existing information, then describe the research paths you think might have merit.  Laymen have described this process as "mapmaking", I believe.)

That's not what this paper is, though.  This paper describes a high school experiment with a $20 budget, but is written in a very attention-seeking, carefully crafted way, that got it featured in Applied Physics Letters.

(The "orders of magnitude" claim is one that still angers me.  Do you still not realize it does not refer to the power, only to the open-circuit voltage, of the TEG?  In my opinion, that is the most egregious example of manipulative statements in this article.  On one hand, it makes me angry; on the other hand, I really respect the scientific writing advisor or expert the authors of the papers had.)

Coming from Standford University, it is laughable.  A waste of time on behalf of everybody involved; unless – as I do claim – it was actually written to manipulate humans, and was never even intended to have any scientific merit.  In that sense, it is an excellent specimen.

It's just that articles like this are a huge part – I'm not really sure whether a part of the reason or a part of the symptoms, because the two are so closely entangled in academic publishing and research grants – of why I too left academia.


What I am telling, is that in Finland, the only way to get academic grants in Physics is to either apply to foundations that will support your research because you belong to a protected group (Swedish-speaking minority is a very effective one); or do research already done elsewhere, because those with the official research budgets will only support research that lets them say they support leading research in Physics.

I am telling you that the quality of papers is in steep decline, because the metrics are quantitative only.

I am telling you that it is fucking difficult to get funding for Physics research that actually breaks new ground, exactly because funding the kind of "research" and "experiments" as in this paper are so much more socially acceptable and low-risk for those with the budgets.  The majority of research funding in Physics in Finland goes to research that is already conducted elsewhere.  This means that instead of actually extending the field of knowledge, we're just re-discovering the same areas near the edges again and again.

I am talking from personal experience.  You, barycentric, really do sound like you describe what you wish the world is like, without having actual experience.  You are well entitled to your opinion, but do note that the real world is what it is, and is not magically transmogrified by your hopes and beliefs.

I do also have friends who have worked in the US as physicists at DoD and DoE labs, but I consider their experiences anecdotal, second-hand information.  If it matters any, the situation there (with papers vetted for current-administration-political-friendliness before being even submitted to any publication) sounds like many ways even worse.  Easier to get funding for ground-breaking research, but also much stricter political/attitude/viewpoint filter, and higher risks for exclusion from the field if you stray from the "accepted respectable" path and opinions.

There is no chance someone like Isaac Newton –– who was heavily into alchemy –– would be funded today.  And that is a loss for science.

[nctnico]

I am telling you that it is fucking difficult to get funding for Physics research that actually breaks new ground, exactly because funding the kind of "research" and "experiments" as in this paper are so much more socially acceptable and low-risk for those with the budgets.  The majority of research funding in Physics in Finland goes to research that is already conducted elsewhere.  This means that instead of actually extending the field of knowledge, we're just re-discovering the same areas near the edges again and again.

But wouldn't that have anything to do with any somewhat radical idea being axed down and stamped into the ground? Take Elon Musk's hyperloop idea for example...

If I where a researcher nowadays, I'd keep my more radical ideas to myself  and publish only what is socially acceptable. Better safe than sorry. Actually I have introduced radically different approaches / solutions to a problem in one of the projects I have helped develop during the past few years. Once released it will stir up quite a bit of debate among people stuck in certain thinking patterns.

edit: typo

[thm_w]

I have to ask - with all this talk - have ANY of you actually read the paper? There might be a few nuggets of wisdom in there. There are a few integrals in there that I doubt 50% of the complainers in this thread could even solve. I mean, hell, it's open access. Their data is really clean. You all are asking a lot of questions about the paper that are answered by the paper.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0085205

We are, for the most part, complaining about the hype the article was presented with, not the measurements or calculations in the article itself.

But since you want to go there, try looking a bit closer at what you are referring to. The integrals referenced from other papers and not original work.

[nctnico]

I have to ask - with all this talk - have ANY of you actually read the paper? There might be a few nuggets of wisdom in there. There are a few integrals in there that I doubt 50% of the complainers in this thread could even solve. I mean, hell, it's open access. Their data is really clean. You all are asking a lot of questions about the paper that are answered by the paper.

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0085205

We are, for the most part, complaining about the hype the article was presented with, not the measurements or calculations in the article itself.

But since you want to go there, try looking a bit closer at what you are referring to. The integrals referenced from other papers and not original work.

Ofcourse. These are likely thermal dynamics 101.

[bsfeechannel]

For those interested, there are two things that triggered this video (also for the person asking before whether I was debunking the media hype or the paper, the answer is essentially both).

Well, I, for one, don't care what triggers you.

Your channel, your trigger.

However, you invited us to discuss your video down below. And down below discussing we are.

But of course it wasn't, it was using a COTS TEG with the sole "research" being the actual application of said COTS TEG and PV panel for the stated application is reducing or eliminating battery storage.

Well, your µcurrent is just COTS components for the stated application of reducing burden voltage. I don't get why this is a demerit.

[thm_w]

Well, your µcurrent is just COTS components for the stated application of reducing burden voltage. I don't get why this is a demerit.

But he's not written a scientific paper on the ucurrent...

These are the kind of articles published alongside said paper:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0087245
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0083889
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/5.0080456

Honestly don't really care myself about what gets published, as long as its accurate, so I only criticize the hype and misrepresentation aspects.

[wilfred]

The bottom line is: you can't go around saying that every idea that doesn't have an application and/or can be implemented in an economic way right now is utterly useless and axe it.

I don't think anyone here is against fundamental scientific research nor would most reasonable people demand that an immediate practical use be in mind for experiments in physics.  But that's not what this paper was about.  There's no new science at all that I can see and the paper is largely eloquent bullshit about the practical benefits, either hoping nobody notices the 50mW thing or hoping that they suffer from the delusion that a sort of Moore's law applies to everything and that number will increase by orders of magnitude with a little fine tuning (it won't).  The biggest improvement that could be made to this project is to make a container around the outside of the warm end of the TEG and fill it with horse manure every evening.  It's all horseshit anyway.

The paper states 50mW/m². It states it in the heading in big print right up front.

If the debunking is targeting the "hype" and not the straight facts then surely it is as disingenuous to use a highly emotive argument to attack the paper.  The paper isn't claiming new science. It is irrelevant how eloquent the paper is or whether you want to make a value judgement it is BS. There is nothing in the paper or the hype to confirm they were hoping no-one notices or that readers should be delusional. Nor is there a hint of a claim that there exists further orders of magnitude improvement in the near term or at all. The paper states 50mW/m². It states it in the heading in big print right up front.

If you want to debunk it go right ahead and prove you cannot get 50mW/m²   and that that is insufficient to run a standby lamp or sensor in an application where a battery might not be preferred. It's right there in the paper that such is a possible application. Someone who needs 70mW/m² can  proceed to do further work. With added horseshit or without.


If I am objecting to anything it is the supreme irony of whipping up a frenzy amongst a lot of incredulous nitwits on the internet as if that is more noble than the misinforming of non-technical mass media consumers through poorly understood journalism. If there was a purely noble aim to inform the public it could have been done through a very different video that dissected the claims and examined what was being tested and how well it would work under less than ideal circumstances. But that would be too boring to attract sufficient interest without substantial work. Add shit and stir is a time tested easy way to rile up a mob. It is certainly one way adding shit adds heat.