A friend of mine sent me the following interesting article on an effort to take a more scientific/analytical approach to the design and fabrication of wood baseball bats. Weirdly enough, one of the strangest elements of this article for me wasn’t the attempt to bring science and technology to bear on this problem. I actually think that’s inevitable. Rather it was the contention in this article that bats should be struck on the flat-grain instead of the end grain. WHAT???  When I was a kid we would regularly taunt kids who hit a bat held this way. Everyone knew that the bat would most likely shatter killing everyone within miles. Is nothing sacred? But I digress. Back to the wooden bat versus technology smack-down.

In general I find this sort of thing really fascinating – it speaks to the uneasy intersection that occasionally occurs between long-held traditions and emerging technical understanding. And it’s another example when technology is only one of many considerations in the specification of a product.

These intersections can really grate on the engineers. In the instance of Baseball’s major leagues alone – as those of you who are fans know – there is the delicious bedevilment that the bats must be made of wood. It’s a decision made with almost complete deference to the aesthetics, and tradition of the game (not withstanding some concern that composite bats used at the lower levels would actually be dangerous in the hands of free swinging MLBers). In a head-to-head comparison including ease of manufacture, durability, performance, cost and general safety wood would lose (say that three times quick).

Given their choice and absent rules and tradition to the contrary I suspect few if any few modern day engineers would elect to use wood in this application- a notoriously quirky and fundamentally unpredictable material.

In point of fact, with a few exceptions engineers have generally been successful in eradicating wood from most non-building related designs (tennis rackets, car bodies, golf clubs, airplanes – even pencils are increasingly hedging towards composites). It’s not that wood is necessarily a BAD material. Quite the converse – wood’s strength to weight ratio is superb and when cost is factored in you often can’t beat wood. It’s fairly plentiful – if responsibly managed it’s fully sustainable and wood offers a plethora of ancillary technical benefits. Oh by the way – in general wood can be beautiful as well. The problem – from an engineer’s point of view – is that wood is not particularly repeatable, predicable or homogenous. A fancy way for saying that the way in which wood performs under stress depends on a whole bunch of factors not always easy to understand or anticipate. And engineers tend to really hate unpredictability.

Of course wood has a host of other aesthetic and evocative benefits – as any of you who’ve ever heard the sound a baseball makes off an aluminum bat can attest. And in my opinion, in the right application, these should weigh as importantly as the purely technical considerations. I offer up wooden boats, roller coasters and even the MLB baseball bat as products where I’m happy to let tradition trump technology. I guess it just gives the engineers a slightly different canvas to paint on. Game on.

There was a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal today on a brewing conflict between natural gas and windmill power.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704188104575083982637451248.html?mod=rss_Today’s_Most_Popular

If you didn’t catch the article the basic gist is that growth of wind power in Texas is primarily coming at the expense of the natural gas consumption which is projected to drop by up to 18% by 2013.

Wind power is, of course, in tremendous favor right now and has garnered (probably rightfully) a series of government subsidies and favorable legislation intended to promote adoption, refinement and R&D in what is perceived as a cleaner technology.  Which seems like great idea I guess unless you’re a natural gas manufacturer in which case you’d be inclined to cry foul.   As a citizen of the planet it seems like a reasonable approach (although I am more than willing to bet the natural gas manufacturers are armed with reams of compelling charts and studies on the relative “cleanness” of their industry or the “dirt” on wind turbines).  As a business owner I can only imagine the frustration of watching your competitor get a helping hand from the government. 

It reminds me of a couple of external factors that have tremendous impact on the development of emerging technologies.  First, is that new technologies are inherently fragile.  They are almost always more problematic, expensive and complex that the constituency they’re replacing.  Meaning with only rare exceptions they often require a bit of life-support .  Within a company this life support can take the form of tolerating a lower profitability – or perhaps even unprofitability while the bugs are worked out.  In my opinion this can take incredible courage , foresight and is rare and seldom appreciated.  Most companies are incapable or politically unwilling to make this kind of investment and are content to follow on with a series of Honey Nut Cheerios like brand extensions.  On a larger scale where grand shifts in technology may be required, only governments are capable of providing this life support and have to be willing and able to act with the greater good in mind- think the Space program… or wind mills.   Same courage and foresight.  Just as rare if not more so.

Finally is the understanding that tinkering with the free market always has unexpected consequences and very real winners and losers for whom the decisions become matters of fiscal life and death.  A responsibility that should not be taken lightly. 

Oh, by the way… we’re playing around with a low cost low power vertical axis wind turbine here at Design Concepts.  Here’s the Alpha prototype… Hope to have the Beta on line by this summer and take my office “off grid!”  Wish us luck!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed3nPQMS6YM