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2 days ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
Earlier this month I came across the following graphic, originally posted on Reddit in 2022, showing the state of housing affordability in the US. The graphic color-codes counties based on the ratio of median home value to median household income:Green counties have median home value less than 4 times median household income. Yellow counties have a median home value between 4 and 6 times median household income.
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1 week ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at some Construction Physics email stats, why appliances break so often, a special economic zone for Silicon valley, a river filtering pool, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the newsletter is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
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1 week ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
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. Historically, this was done by connecting and disconnecting power plants, or ramping their output up and down as demand rises and falls.
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2 weeks ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure and industrial technology. This week we look at Figure’s new humanoid robot demo, what it would take to create the data for a robot foundation model, “right to repair” on naval vessels, electricity costs and power laws, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
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3 weeks ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at risks to US battery storage, un-affordable affordable housing, a major Supreme Court NEPA ruling, making chip materials in space, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
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3 weeks ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
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. The resulting legal dispute between Bell Telephone and Western Union (which owned the rights to Gray’s invention) would consume millions of dollars before being resolved in Bell’s favor in 1879. Such cases of multiple invention are common, and some of the most famous and important modern inventions were invented in parallel.
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4 weeks ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at wind wars, radiation limits, US power plant water use, grassroots opposition to data centers, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber. A few housekeeping items this week:Last week I tried out a new reading list format of more items with shorter descriptions of each.
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1 month ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
In the US solar energy has steadily risen in how much of our electricity it supplies. In 2024, it supplied just over 7% of total electricity generation, up from less than 1% in 2015. Because most planned US electricity generation projects are solar photovoltaics (PV), this fraction will almost certainly continue to rise. But how much can it continue to rise? Is it feasible for solar power to meet most of our electricity demand?
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1 month ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at Tulsa’s remote worker incentives, the “stolen iPhone building”, the Trump administration’s shipbuilding struggles, falling traffic law enforcement, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
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1 month ago | 
construction-physics.com | Brian Potter
During WWII, the US constructed an unprecedented shipbuilding machine. By assembling ships from welded, prefabricated blocks, the US built a huge number of cargo ships incredibly quickly, overwhelming Germany’s u-boats and helping to win the war. But when the war was over, this shipbuilding machine was dismantled. Industrialists like Henry Kaiser and Stephen Bechtel, who operated some of the US’s most efficient wartime shipyards, left the shipbuilding business.