We don't know why lithium batteries work

I like the side-point this author makes. Anytime there's a new discovery in quantum theory or some other escoteric, sexy area of research, thousands of armchair scientist knowitalls fall all over themselves to decry or incorrectly interpret what's been found.<p>Ask a basic question on physics, biology, or engineering and only an actual scientist will pipe up. I blame science fiction novels.

Doesn't this apply to all of science?<p>I mean we don't actually know why anything really works, but we have some models which fit the observations at the moment. This is just a very shallow model i.e. "we poked it and it worked".

Something makes me suspect this article is missing part of the truth, similar to sites that claim we don't know how bees can fly (we do).

"“Science literacy” tests quiz the initiated on their command of abstract dogmas acquired through no exercise of one’s ability to generate knowledge."<p>This is something that often bothers me about the r/atheism crowd.<p>A young person encountering an idea like evolution for the first time <i>should</i> be extremely skeptical and require much convincing, because it is not an intuitive idea at all. Believing in it just because the teacher says you will get a bad grade on the test if you don't does nothing to inculcate scientific thinking in young people.<p>Now, students unwilling to engage with physical evidence obviously have a different problem. But with the level of discourse I see coming out of many proponents of atheism on the Internet, I often feel many of them are proud of their "command of abstract dogmas" and are not particularly people demonstrating the "ability to generate knowledge."

&#62; Still no one knows what chemical process yields this material, what is this material, and why a small structural change in the electrolyte makes such a colossal difference in the performance<p>I read this an immediately saw a parallel with computer science. To quote from CLRS: [1] "Computer scientists are intrigued by how a small change to the problem statement can cause a big change in the efficiency of the best known algorithm". It strikes me as incredible how seemingly simple concepts can be the tip of a much bigger iceberg of complexity. Another example of this would be the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem [2] . A proposition one can understand with primary school mathematics, whose proof eluded mathematicians for centuries and required the invention of new mathematics. Sir Andrew Wiles, the person who proved the proposition, had to see deep symmetries between a plethora of domains in mathematics. The main idea that I find remarkable is the incredible complexity of the world in which we live - even the smallest of changes to a concept we think we understand (Electrochemistry, Algorithms, Mathematics), can redirect the trajectory of our understanding completely. To me, this seems as if we have only the most superficial understanding of the myriad structures and substructures of the universe. New developments in all areas of science excite me greatly purely because our understanding has been advanced that <i>infinitesimally</i> bit more.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms</a> [2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem</a>

Easy to claim in chemistry - where loads of research is done by simply trying everything and seeing what works. Its no longer interesting to understand why. Medicine, industrial processes, it doesn't matter. I read once that the last medicine designed by a chemist was the cure for syphilis - decades ago. Probably not true any more, but lots of Edison-style 'science' is being done still.

I always wondered why everything related to my computing devices seems to follow some variation of Moores law but the battery. This explains it.

Not an expert but I find this difficult to believe. We know a LOT about battery chemistry.

We didn't know exactly why lots of pharmaceuticals worked either, and we still don't in some cases.

I also wonder about the "graphene sheets" - it's not the first time I read that on the description of a battery. Surely it's graphite, not graphene? I don't think batteries are built with one-atom-thick layers.

Some diagrams here <a href="http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/lithium-ion-battery1.htm" rel="nofollow">http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/lithium-i...</a>

We may not always know how or why (at the deepest fundamental levels). We don't need to. We use science to know that it does.

a digression but the writer seems russian by virtue of his/her sentence construction. I can't really pin down the reason, perhaps a linguist can help me out? (Disclaimer: I'm not russian. Edit: By the comments on his page it looks it's actually a russian. Also the use of livejournal)

Related to not knowing why lithium works in the brain?

I read it in 12th :p