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What physics has Elon Musk contributed?
by jsprogrammer 12y ago
What physics has Elon Musk contributed?
- nostrademons 12y agoTesla's battery technology arguably represents a paradigm shift in how batteries work. At least, they reportedly re-envisioned it from first principles. Tesla has chosen to keep this technology proprietary and make lots of money off of it rather than publish it, but it's not unlikely that it represents some serious original research. How much of that is done by Musk himself is debatable. One of my pet peeves about the Musk fan-club is that he tends to partner with some very brilliant engineers and then get all the credit for the work they do. However, people high up in his companies (more than one of them) have said that he involves himself very extensively in discovering the technology itself, and his bachelors and the first couple years of his Ph.D were both in physics, so it seems likely that he does at least know the science behind what his companies do.
- amit_m 12y agoThat's engineering, not physics. There is a lot of chemistry research that goes into battery technology, but AFAIK Tesla's batteries use tried-and-proven lithium ion tech. Also, he dropped out of his Ph.D. on the first week. So it appears that he didn't learn too much physics in academia. Rocketry and electric cars don't involve too much advanced physics and he has top notch experts working for him in all the relevant fields.