Posted on 02/21/2024 5:52:39 PM PST by ChessExpert
Gilder Guideposts:
Cacophonous are the voices decrying the implosion of “the U.S. Innovation Ecosystem,” as the Harvard Business Review puts it.
Do not hope, the voices warn, to see in our future anything like the miraculous progress of the last two centuries, or even the last 50 years. It’s done. Tighten your belts.
Supporting the doomsters are dozens of academic studies arguing that “big research,” whether at our great corporations or our universities, yields increasingly diminishing returns. Making headlines recently was a Nature study concluding, “We find that papers and patents are increasingly less likely to break with the past in ways that push science and technology in new directions. This pattern holds universally across fields…”
The world your authors live in, the companies we visit, the astonishing innovations we witness almost daily, all give stark witness that innovation continues aboundingly.
As to whether we should depend on big research as the source of progress, much could be said. Today, however, we offer a simple parable. ... Here the tinkerer stepped in for the first but not the last time. Nakamura had spent almost a year visiting a U.S. firm that was using MOCVD. He went hoping to learn advanced techniques. Instead, scorned by his colleagues for lacking a PhD, he was put to work as the lab equivalent of a handyman. One of his assignments was to build his host company’s next MOCVD for those exalted colleagues to use.
Nakamura was furious but that experience would be crucial to the world getting the blue LED. ... It was an ingenious solution, but the skills required could have been learned in a shop class and would never be taught in a university. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Exactly.
Book smart don't usually cut it in the real world. And I'm book smart.
In college I painted some fluorescent tube blue and used them to light up my dorm room...didn’t need a PHD for that.
Some careers and skills not only require books smarts but actual research, months of in the field time with more research and to be published and peer reviewed plus board certified by your state. No one is going to let a “self taught” geologist touch a 50 let alone 100 million dollar hole in the ground. Post graduate is entry level at the true sciences. Most senior scientists have multiple master’s if not multiple PhDs. Same for exploration no one is going to risk hundreds of millions on someone who doesn’t have a pedigree behind them. Even with pedigree you still have to mentor under a staff senior or higher geo before you ever land your own well let alone wildcat one. Real science still requires years and I mean 12+ of specific knowledge,experience and pedigree.
Years ago, my boss got his PhD by making one of the blue LEDs that had the right color, but too little power (as mentioned in the excellent video). At that time, successful production of the led as covered in the video was years away.
The video is great, and should serve as a reminder to all that perseverance is the prime ingredient to success.
Which came first?
The Blue LED, or the white LED?
(Hint: The Blue LED.... White LEDs are Blue LEDs shining through a Cerium Yttrium Garnet phosphor)
I think the guy was totally onto the “book” Physics.
He had the hugely important part of being an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable process practitioner to get the Physics to work.
Sounds like Nakamura disproves your theory...
I was in a company that was technically oriented and had tons of PhD’s in the hard sciences. Even among them there was a wide spectrum of competence. From a physicist who had worked on every underground nuke test since 1960 and loved learning new things no matter how small to a boasting EE from some “Ecole” in Switzerland who plugged a power strip into itself and chewed out the IT guy when his computer didn’t work.
There’s a big diffference between 15 years of experience and 1 year of experience 15 times.
Yes, when I took physics, the head of the department [PhD] skipped the “book” physics, and was teaching to the test.
Excellent video. Thanks.
I’m not sure that’s the same thing....
There’s a YouTube video that details the travails and successes of the Japanese genius who created the first useful blue LED. Good News: It’s a great and inspiring story and despite little support he succeeded and got a Nobel prize for his efforts. Bad News: Fully animated billboards.
I was agreeing with your initial post. :)
The blue LED was the last LED light color needed to produce white light in combination with green and red LEDs, IIRC.
Spoken like Ph.D. Fauci.
Outstanding video!
It turns out to work better to use a blue(ish)* LED energizing a white(ish) phosphor.
In fact, if you look at the spectrum of a white LED there will be a broad output in the warmer colors and then a spike of blue.
*Older “white” LED’s in particular often still have a purplish cast to them. The phosphors have come a long way too.
I remember when the 1st blue LEDs from Nichia came out and seeing one at the Consumer Electronics Show. My reaction was “ohhhhh..... shiiiittt!” (In a good way!)
That Channel, Veritasium, has a great piece on German scientist, Fritz Haber:
“The Man Who Killed Millions and Saved Billions”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQkmJI63ykI
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