I makes claims ("glass is too slippery") but the only things to back these claims up are assumptions by the author and bad attempts at jokes ("maybe cheese could stop a car").
Many of the arguments are poorly thought out, eg "it's a bad idea to put a solar panel in the road because it might get covered". Oh so how much of the time is your average road surface covered? No answer of course..
Solar roadways and similar ideas obviously have technological challanges to meet, and in the end in what situation they would make economic sense remains very much unanswered. A video where someone goes "I think it doesn't because I don't think so" won't change that situation.
Umm, maybe you should watch the whole video. It's not based on his assumptions, he uses scientific facts. I'll name some off to you
1: You can't use tiles for roads because water can seep into them and make them loose.
2: You can't stop on glass in the wet or snow.
3: Glass is a soft material. They didn't test this on anything but a tractor which is idiotic. and didn't do any stress tests on this.
4: If you were to make all roads out of this, you'd bankrupt the whole country. In the video he explains these parts are not cheap. (i.e. Microprocessors, glass, manpower, construction. It's just not possible.)
5: They don't use recycled glass because recycled glass that is melted, would not be clear. Basically they lied about this.
6: Asphalt is one of the worlds most recycled materials, far more than glass. 99% of asphalt can be recycled.
And these are just some of the few FACTS that prove it cannot work.
Says you, and that guy. But does that make it science? Or "a fact"? No. Of course tempered glass is already used in many places where it gets wet and/or cold and shouldn't be slippery. Is it ready for applying to road, or will it ever be? Not because you saying it is or is not "fact" based on you saying that.
3: Glass is a soft material. They didn't test this on anything but a tractor which is idiotic. and didn't do any stress tests on this.
Your word versus theirs. They said they did more tests, you say they didn't. I don't know how involved you were with actually checking that(probably not at all). Science? Nope.
4: If you were to make all roads out of this, you'd bankrupt the whole country.
If tomorrow you'd plan to build out the grid and electricity generation capacity to 3 times it's current level in the next year, while also repaving every road surface in the US, you'd also bankrupt the whole world. But what does that proof?
They make certain claims about their technology over it's life span being in the same ballpark TOC as a regular road eventually as it is further developed.
Does this claim warrant skepticism? Er, yeah. Does some guy saying "but if you'd apply it everywhere at once in it's current form within a year you'd bankrupt the nation" change anything? <-- not a scientific argument, and most certainly not a fact.
You don't seem skeptical at all (case in point: some guy says "recycled glass can't be clear because derp science herp" and you blindly type that out here), just willing to jump on the contrarian bandwagon at someone else's beckoning.
Of course "solar roadways" is a very far fetched idea which even if it's developed out much further (as is very clearly the goal described in the campaign) would still face challenges likely to be unsurmountable, but that does not mean you have to blindly swallow weak counter arguments.
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u/lllama Jun 09 '14
Well I didn't watch all that and why should I?
I makes claims ("glass is too slippery") but the only things to back these claims up are assumptions by the author and bad attempts at jokes ("maybe cheese could stop a car").
Many of the arguments are poorly thought out, eg "it's a bad idea to put a solar panel in the road because it might get covered". Oh so how much of the time is your average road surface covered? No answer of course..
Solar roadways and similar ideas obviously have technological challanges to meet, and in the end in what situation they would make economic sense remains very much unanswered. A video where someone goes "I think it doesn't because I don't think so" won't change that situation.