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Tin Whiskers — Fact Or Fiction?
bLanark writes "Some time ago, most electronics were soldered with old-fashioned lead solder, which has been tried and tested for decades. In 2006, the EU banned lead in solder, and so most manufacturers switched to a lead-free solder. Most made the switch in advance, I guess due to shelf-life of products and ironing out problems working with the new material. Lead is added to solder as it melts at low temperature, but also, it prevents the solder from growing 'whiskers' — crystalline limbs of metal. The effect of whiskers on soldered equipment would include random short-circuits and strange RF-effects. Whiskers can grow fairly quickly and become quite long. Robert Cringley wrote this up this some time ago, but it seems that the world has not been taking notice. I guess cars (probably around 30 processors in a modern car) and almost every appliance would be liable to fail sooner than expected due to tin whiskers. Note that accelerated life-expectancy tests can't simulate the passing of time for whiskers to grow. I've googled, and there is plenty of research into the effects of tin whiskers. I should point out that the Wikipedia page linked to above states that tin whisker problems 'are negligible in modern alloys,' but can we trust Wikipedia? So: was the tin whisker problem overhyped, was it an initial problem that has been solved in the few years since lead-free solder came into use, or is it affecting anyone already?"
Look at it from the manufacturer's point of view. There's a chance that any piece of consumer electronics is now going to wear out and die even faster, causing people to buy replacements more frequently. Sounds like a great deal for the manufacturer with no downside. They don't have to pay to dispose of these things properly. And no, chucking your old electronics in the trash is not the proper way of disposing of them, unless you like cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, and brominated flame retardants seeping into your drinking water.
Make manufacturers bear the ENTIRE cost of properly and safely disposing of their products, and overnight we'd have cleaner, greener, more long-lasting and durable products.
I used to buy into Wikipedia's stated ethos until I realized that any one person can (and all too frequently do) hijack articles to push and protect their point of view and once that happens you can forget about the "Five Pillars" and objectivity.
Yep, if I went to a "legitimate" encyclopedia rather than Wikipedia i'd guess 99% or more of the topics I look up every day wouldn't be there at all.
I don't get all the hate for Wikipedia. So it's not perfect, well neither is the Encyclopedia Britannica, but for me Wikipedia is the single most useful resource on the internet second only to Google, and even that may be a tossup because Google often just links me to a Wikipedia page. I'm there dozens of times every day, whether it be looking up something I saw on TV, an actor's name, a musician's discography, or something I just read about.
It's a shame such a valuable resource takes so much heat. Maybe it has its problems but it's alot more accurate and alot less opinionated than the average webpage you'll find on any given topic, and honestly it doesn't really matter to me that the article on Chevy Chase hasn't been published in a scientific journal for peer review.