Resistance Insistence
Resistance is a word that is stuck squarely in my mind today. I have a gray t-shirt with the word RESIST across the chest. It is a political statement and it is meant to mean a refusal to accept or comply with something. I like the sentiment in today’s political environment, only I would add an exclamation point at the end for RESIST! It says to me and anyone who encounters me and my t-shirt that I do not accept and do not intend to comply with the current authoritarian trend towards what I call say-anything, do-anything politics as usual. Led and encouraged by the success of Trump, or should I say the success in getting apparent compliance from the American citizenry, the rest of the world’s baser instincts are being given wing and authoritarian nationalism is becoming rampant. Watching Indian Prime Minister Modi march around Texas holding hands with Donald Trump is almost sickening. Modi is pandering to the expatriate Indian vote. He is using Donald Trump to say-anything, do-anything to garner votes and garner power, all while suborning his values to achieve electoral goals. Mahatma Gandhi is rolling over in his grave. His legacy of righteous and selfless resistance for the greater good stands in stark contrast to the approach of PM Modi. The ends never justify the means, plain and simple.
Resistance is also an electrical term which means an electrical quantification of the measure of how a device or material reduces or impedes the electric current flow through it. Easy enough to understand. Put an electrical current through water and it flies. Put it through a piece of woo d and not so much. The resistance of wood is greater than the resistance of water. Whenever you are using electricity, it matters what you are putting it through and the amount of electricity you need to do a job depends on how much resistance exists in the system you are putting it through. Did I mention that after one year of engineering, I ran off to be an economist, where my brain found less resistance to the work?
The arena I find myself working in these days is that of electrochemistry. OK, electricity run through systems to make or transform chemicals. Got it. So far so good. Naturally, the amount of electricity being used is the critical element as to whether what electrochemistry can do is worthwhile or not. Turning lead into gold seems like a fun and profitable thing to do. So, suppose you learned that through electrochemistry you could do just that. The first thing a normally inquisitive person would ask is how much electricity it would cost. You would ask how much does lead cost, how much does the electricity required cost and how much is the gold worth. Since gold is worth $1,500 an ounce and lead is worth $0.06 per ounce, let’s ignore the lead price. So, the only questions become, how much does the machine cost (assume it is negligible given a long useful life), and how much electricity is needed and at what cost. Electricity today costs from $0.05-$0.12 per kWh when purchased off the grid and about $0.04 per kWh when using renewables like solar or wind. If it takes 10 MWh’s of electricity (10,000 kWh’s) to make an ounce of gold, that means you are using $400 to make $1,500, so all good. If it costs you 100 MWh’s then it costs you $4,000 to make $1,500 and it makes no economic sense. In fact, digging and refining gold from the earth costs about $1,000 per ounce, so that also tells the tale of where the electrochemical value proposition lies.
One more step and you will understand what I do all day long. The difference between using 10WHh’s and 100 MWh’s is mostly a function of how much resistance the machine you’re using has imbedded in it. So, resistance in this game is a very big deal. The difference between 1.28 volts versus 1.58 volts of ceramics resistance in the tubes we use is the difference between success and failure. All our best scientific minds are focused on getting ceramic resistance (both in terms of structure and material conductivity and even connectivity) down as low as possible. We must constantly be honest with ourselves about what resistance can be improved on and what resistance is absolute and cannot be reduced. Strangely enough, if the price of renewable electricity comes down far enough fast enough (it is said to be dropping as we speak to $0.02 per kWh), that overwhelms the overall decision, but only in considering all electrochemical applications versus other technologies within the electrochemistry arena. In other words, the rising or lowering tide lifts and drops all ships equally if they are in the same pond.
What is my point with all this resistance thinking? In the same way that I feel resistance is a critical part of liberal democracy. I think insisting on resistance integrity is equally an important part of scientific inquiry. The term may mean different things in the political and scientific areas, but it is equally important. Resistance insistence is a moral imperative in both political thinking and scientific thinking. It goes to intellectual integrity.
I am amazed how much integrity matters in all aspects of life. It is equally amazing how easily some people ignore integrity to say-anything or do-anything for personal gain. My credo is simple. I will maintain the high road and use integrity to guide my political thinking and I will use integrity in my management of the scientific integrity of the discovery and invention process in which I am engaged. Resistance insistence is what keeps the ship of state afloat and the ship of scientific inquiry right side up.