Raw science of electric vehicles

One of the things I find to be a good break from work is refreshing my thinking on the basics of physics. I know… kinda geeky. But when you go back to the roots of science, sometimes it brings up a solution to today's needs for MORE POWER and less waste. It can take a radical way of thinking about a problem we thought was already solved. And in a world of possibilities opened up by new electric vehicle systems, I like to get to those roots whenever we can.

Of all the TV scientists who came across the airwaves, I think Prof. Julius Sumner Miller had the most intriguing shows. His simple setups are full of real demonstrations of the kind rarely used in this digitally created world around us. Here in episode 40, I noticed his first demonstrations of how to make a magnet are something humans could easily have understood at the same time as fire and its use in the world around them.

Now, thousands of years later, we are contemplating a move away from the primal energy of controlled fire for our mobility, and a new adoption of the more advanced of our human tools: magnets and stored energy. And much like the Professor mentions as an aside… it feels a bit like witchcraft, or magic. As a society, we've been burning wood, or coal, or animal or petroleum oils for energy for so long that anything else feels not quite human. That long coexistence with fire is what we feel when a car with a lot of big cylinders comes cruising by at a slow idle and then opens up the throttle for a drink of pure power. We connect to that, in a way we often can't explain.

But when you think about the magnets and batteries and motors and the millions of digital switches on a microchip that it takes to push a motorcycle down the road on electrons, I hope you'll think of Professor Julius Sumner Miller and his geeky knowledge of magnetism and all things physics. The new way of cruising around is just as human as a campfire.

Just without the smoke in your face.