Construction Physics

Where are Vacation Homes Located in the US? As of 2023, the US has around 142.3 million housing units: roughly one home for every 2.4 people in the country.

Where are Vacation Homes Located in the US?

How China Became the World’s Biggest Shipbuilder Since 2017, China has been the largest shipbuilder in the world.

How China Became the World’s Biggest Shipbuilder

Should the Federal Government Sell Land? An early version of the US Senate budget bill which passed last week included a provision to sell off between 2 and 3 million acres of federal land in western states, ostensibly to be used for homebuilding.

Should the Federal Government Sell Land?

Why Are Homes in Western States So Expensive? Earlier this month I came across the following graphic, originally posted on Reddit in 2022, showing the state of housing affordability in the US.

Why Are Homes in Western States So Expensive?

Batteries Are Making the Electrical Grid More Reliable To operate reliably, the US electrical grid needs to balance supply and demand: to make sure, at any given moment, that the amount of electricity demanded by homes, businesses, and factories is equal to the amount being supplied by nuclear reactors, gas turbines, and other types of power plants.

Batteries Are Making the Electrical Grid More Reliable

How Often Do Inventions Have Multiple Inventors? When Alexander Graham Bell filed a patent for the telephone on February 14th, 1876, he beat competing telephone developer Elisha Gray to the patent office by just a few hours.

How Often Do Inventions Have Multiple Inventors?

Can We Afford Large-scale Solar PV? In the US solar energy has steadily risen in how much of our electricity it supplies.

Can We Afford Large-scale Solar PV?

How Japan Invented Modern Shipbuilding And conquered the shipbuilding industry in the process

How Japan Invented Modern Shipbuilding

Fixing Naval Ship Acquisition This is a policy proposal written by Austin Vernon and myself for improving US naval shipbuilding.

Fixing Naval Ship Acquisition

How the US Built 5,000 Ships in WWII Among the most impressive manufacturing achievements of the US during WWII was the number of ships it produced.

How the US Built 5,000 Ships in WWII

Robot Dexterity Still Seems Hard You can’t throw a rock these days without hitting someone trying to build humanoid robots.

Robot Dexterity Still Seems Hard

50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics I’ve been writing Construction Physics since September of 2020.

50 Things I’ve Learned Writing Construction Physics

Understanding US Power Outages Modern civilization relies on electric power for almost everything, and even small disruptions to electric service are incredibly disruptive.

Understanding US Power Outages

Who Wins Nobel Prizes? The most prestigious scientific achievement is likely the Nobel Prize, which is awarded every year to “those who confer the greatest benefit to mankind” in the fields of physics, medicine, and chemistry (of course, there are also Nobel Prizes for literature and peace, as well as a Nobel Prize for

Who Wins Nobel Prizes?

Understanding Solar Energy The biggest energy story of the last fifteen years is the rise of solar photovoltaics, also known as solar PV or simply solar panels.

Understanding Solar Energy

Will Boom Successfully Build a Supersonic Airliner? Boom Supersonic is an aerospace startup trying to build a supersonic airliner.

Will Boom Successfully Build a Supersonic Airliner?

Why it's so hard to build a jet engine Civilization's toughest technical challenges are those that require extraordinary (and constantly improving) performance to be delivered at a low cost.

Why it's so hard to build a jet engine

How Will the Trump Tariffs Affect Construction? Earlier this month the Trump administration announced hefty 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports, along with an additional 10% tariffs on Chinese imports.

How Will the Trump Tariffs Affect Construction?

Inside the interconnection queue Electric power in the US is provided by the electrical grid, a huge network of power plants, transmission lines, and transformers that moves electric power from where it's generated to where it's consumed.

Inside the interconnection queue

Why Is Homeowners Insurance Getting So Expensive? The recent Los Angeles fires have highlighted the rising costs of homeowners insurance in the US.

Why Is Homeowners Insurance Getting So Expensive?

Why Skyscrapers Became Glass Boxes Everything put into the building that is unnecessary, every cubic foot that is used for purely ornamental purposes beyond that needed to express its use and to make it harmonize with others of its class, is a waste — is, to put it in plain English, perverting someone’s money — George Hill, commercial real estate expert, 1904

Why Skyscrapers Became Glass Boxes

Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC Book review of the autobiography of Morris Chang.

Morris Chang and the Origins of TSMC

Energy Cheat Sheet Building an intuition about energy

Energy Cheat Sheet

What Learning by Doing Looks Like The evolution of polycrystalline diamond drill bits

What Learning by Doing Looks Like

How We Got the Lithium-Ion Battery It took decades of research, performed around the world, before a practical lithium-ion battery was possible.

How We Got the Lithium-Ion Battery

How Good Are American Roads? We’re in an era where US infrastructure is getting a lot of attention.

How Good Are American Roads?

The Influence of Bell Labs We’ve talked previously about Bell Labs’ long, storied history as an innovation engine and a generator of new technology.

The Influence of Bell Labs

Does All Semiconductor Manufacturing Depend on Spruce Pine Quartz? Here’s an idea you see spreading across the internet every so often: that all semiconductor and solar PV manufacturing depends on extremely pure quartz from the town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

Does All Semiconductor Manufacturing Depend on Spruce Pine Quartz?

How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S. I spend a lot of time reading about manufacturing and its evolution, which means I end up repeatedly reading about the times and places where radical changes in manufacturing were taking place: Britain in the late 18th century, the US in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Japan in the second half of the 20th century, and (to a lesser extent) China today.

How China Is Like the 19th Century U.S.

Will the China Cycle Come for Airbus and Boeing? Noah Smith, author of the economics Substack Noahpinion, often refers to a common trajectory in Chinese manufacturing as the “China Cycle”:

Will the China Cycle Come for Airbus and Boeing?