OHM MY GOD! Move over graphene, here comes '100% PERFECT' stanene A US, Chinese, and German research team has come up with a new material dubbed "stanene" that could – theoretically, at least – conduct electricity with "100 percent efficiency" at temperatures at which computer chips operate, raising the tantalizing possibility of highly efficient future chippery. "Stanene could increase the …
Stanene? Really, stanene? I don't care if it converts oxygen into platinum, I don't want to design anything with stanene in it. Scientists the world over are terrible at marketing, how are they going to license something with a name like that?
"Intel processors, now with 50% more stanene." It sounds like an antiperspirant commercial from the '50's.
But seriously, someone in science really should address the whole marketing thing. So few of scientists present well and it leads to talented researchers not getting their fair share of the credit and inferior research getting pushed to the front of the pack because somebody is pushing it. Plus, stuff like this happens. Stanene. Christ.
Marketing will simply apply a glitzy name if for some reason it's ever marketed to the public (see the pharmaceutical industry).
It sounds like something that is only ever really going to be the concern of scientists and engineers of one form or another. Engineers don't care what something is called; if it works, it works.
I know it'll get renamed something more marketing friendly if it becomes a real thing. I was just joking around because my Pauline joke died before it got started and I fell committed at that point.
The part about scientists getting screwed because they often have trouble positioning their work is true though.
Its not a war over pronunciation - the word is spelt differently on either side of the atlantic. IIRC the discoverer of aluminium/aluminum changed his mind on a voyage from Europe to the States. Due to the timescales that information travelled at back then, the aluminium version had stuck fast in GB by the time he got back to this side of the pond.
"We could have a whole new Alooooominum war over the pronunciation"
I think you'll find that the disagreement in that particular case is nothing to do with the long 'o' sound used in the US... it's actually the dropping of the second 'i', when it's common throughout the rest of the periodic table to have 'ium' as a suffix, that irritates people.
In fact, I believe I read somewhere that the correct pronunciation was originally used in the US; the change came about because someone made a spelling mistake in an advert or patent document for a method of processing the metal, and it ended up getting adopted as the normal usage simply because his process was the market leader and most widely known.
It just goes to show that even the smallest cock-up can have far reaching consequences...
"Stanene? Really, stanene? I don't care if it converts oxygen into platinum, I don't want to design anything with stanene in it. Scientists the world over are terrible at marketing, how are they going to license something with a name like that?"
And I think that's way humour-by-exaggeration rarely works on the internet without an icon.
Or you've just not had you're morning caffeine fix.
Sorry Jefe, didn't realise you were joking. I feel kinda bad now...
The trouble with the Internet is that because there are so many frothing-at-the-mouth crazies spouting all kinds of ludicrousness, it has become very difficult for these jaded eyes to spot the difference between exaggerated tongue-in-cheek humour and genuinely 'serious' comments.
Irrelevant - no matter how stuffed with advanced mathematical and computational algorithms, clever quantum mechanics, devious electromagnetic engineering, hi-tech materials science, etc ... that your phone (or whatever) is, they aren't going to use that to market it. They'll just show an attractive person looking happy while using it.
At "best" the marketeers might name it something sciencey - "quantum", "galaxy" - but even then they only used quantum coz it "sounded cool", and it'll be almost certain that the number of galaxies in your phone approaches zero.
never mind the name...
who'd have thought the boiling point of water was 100 C.
you live and learn here on the register that's for sure.
tell us El Reg, what is the name of the hinge thing half way down my arm ? And is there anyway of stopping getting it confused with the padded bit with the hole in it at the top of my legs ?
Don Jefe, i'm late to the party, as usual but reading the first comment (i got the joke right away) and seeing dozens of downvotes just amazed me.
chin up though, they could have just gone with "stannous fluoride" which was (is?) the common form of fluoride added to toothpaste and all over the ads when i was just a wee one.
imagine having to design circuits with toothpaste!
@Wzrd1
>>>>"They would probably give up looking, close their eyes (yes... the whole country) and stick a pin in a map - and say "that's where it is""
>>Wow! You got the majority of US citizens pegged true!
>>How depressing.
Not half as depressing as me noting that rather a lot of my fellow GB dwellers are just as geographically challenged as our hilarious stereotypical Merkin.
Cheers
Jon
"As soon as they worked out where it was on the map....."
Well, as a born and raised US citizen, I can attest to the fact that not a single soul in the US could find their own ass on a map, not even with both hands, a illustrated map and three navigators.
That said, people in the US would most certainly buy anything named iStan. It has that magical "i" in front that turns shit into gold.
I can attest to the fact that not a single soul in the US could find their own ass on a map
That's a mighty detailed hypothetical map you have there.
I know plenty of people in the US - myself included - who are quite adept at reading maps, and have a decent grasp of world physical and political geography.
I can be as cynical as the next curmudgeon, but this "boo hoo, no one of X nationality possesses Y skill" cliche that Reg commentators are so fond of has gotten rather dull. Let's try harder in the future, eh?
The heat in chippery is not due really caused by resistive losses but is more a result of capacitive losses.
Each "bit"/transistor holds charge and is, in effect a small capacitor. Every time a bit state toggles from 1 to 0 or 0 to 1, the capacitor must charge or discharge using up energy according to E=0.5 x C xV^2. Toggling billions of those / sec results in the power consumed by the chip.
Changing the resistance of the conductive paths within the chip has little direct impact on that.
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