Pogson and Physics

This is a reponse to ZombieChan comment on Pogson in China:

“Is it me, or does it seem like most people who comment on that site don’t [know] what they’re talking about.”

The fact is, Pogson often shows that he doesn’t know what he is talking about either.

Apple may test their user-interface and design it well but not being a global operation hurts them. They got the physics of antennae wrong and now they are being left out in the cold for not operating in the cold…

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I would guess Apple’s engineers know these things but I would bet the pointy-headed bosses don’t want to waste money on actually verifying that systems work in the real world.

Here’s a hint, Poggy:

1) Increased discharge rate from a galvanic cell, when compounded with internal resistance, results in elevation of temperature within the cell. In the context of a lithum-ion battery, this mean shorter life-spans for individual cells.

2) Again, internal resistance still exists regardless of ambient temperature, and the presense of electic current means conversion from electrical energy to heat regardless of how much you are deviating from STP (standard temperature and pressure, i.e. 25 degree celcius and 1 atmospheric pressure) when operating a doped-silicon based electronic component. Furthermore, increased temperature also means increased localized defects in crystalline structrues (due to the third law of thermodynamics), and that means possible deviation of other properties within the semiconductor.

3) Also, elevated temperature also means increased kinetic instability (i.e. chemical reactivity) between the silicon wafer and ambient chemical species. And that means decreased life-span of the electronic component.

What do these all suggest, you may ask. Well, the answer is simple – you can’t build in thermal insulation for an electrical device and expect it to work in places where ambient temperature regularly goes above 40 degree celcius. There is simply not enough head room for any kind of insulation to happen when you expect the same design to sell globally. What’s more, the second law of thermodynamics dictates that heat simply does not flow from a low temperature region to a high temperature one without additional energy input, and that means whatever you put in your phone to regulate its operating temperature, it will simply eat up the battery charge left, right and center.

Pogson is supposed to be familiar with both computers and physics, and his blog posts show that he knows next to nothing about either. (Don’t you feel sorry for the pupils that he is supposed to educate?) This guy is plain and simply a dope, and do you honestly expect whoever actually likes his blog entries to be saner than him somewhat?