Technology

Let's say you weigh 200 lbs. When you stand on a scale with two feet, that's 200lbs ÷ 2 feet. So the scale reads 100 lbs, right? Of course not. Increasing the number of touch points doesn't reduce the mass.

Now what if you stand on two scales side by side, one foot on each? Then they'll each read 100lbs. The load is distributed across the touch points, but the total mass when you add them back up remains the same.

So what does that mean for ol muskaroo? It's hard to say who's correct without knowing more about the floor. If it's server tiles that are hollow underneath and each tile can hold 500lbs individually, maybe it's ok if the cart was large enough that two wheels would never be on the same tile.

But the bottom line is that when the guy that runs the server room says not to do it, you don't fucking do it. Have a little respect. Sure, Musk is the owner so it's kind of technically his server room, but he's being a prick regardless.

I don’t know physics too well, but I’ll try to explain.

First of all, look out for pressure. Slamming your hand on a desk(lots of surface area) may not hurt much, but doing the same thing on a thumb tack(very low surface area) will suck, even though it’s the same amount of force. Pressure is just force/area (I’m probably oversimplifying).

So not only is there still 2000 pounds of force on the floor, it’s all concentrated on one(well, four) areas. Meaning that there’s a high chance the floor will break under those wheels. You’d actually have better luck just sliding the server across the floor.

Elons logic is also just stupid here. An elevator can’t lift a 1,000 pound box, but can it lift four 250 pound boxes? No! Even a child could answer that. The fact that he just assumed that adding four wheels magically distributed the weight is stupid. What if you had five wheels? Eleven? It’s not rocket science (which is quite ironic, given the company he owns).

So yeah. I’ve got no idea how he’s a billionaire. No fucking clue.

The simple reason is that it depends on what in the floor can't actually handle the 2000 lbs. If it's a floor 1'x1' floor tile that will break, then Elon is right. If the loade limit is a beam that spans a larger distance, then he's totally wrong.

In places like a server room, you typically have a raised floor that supports tiles in the neighborhood of 1.5'-3 feet square. (The raised floor allows for all the cabling and air con to be run around the systems.) If you say that the floor can't support more than 2000lbs that typically means they can't guarantee enough of a safety margin and you run the risk of the object breaking through the floor. Musk's wheel argument is crap unless he can be sure each wheel is not on the same floor support area. (Which obviously he can't.)

However floors the spec will typically have some safety margin and that probably kept him from going through the floor. His logic, while not 100% wrong in the basic statement, lacked a deeper understanding of what was going on and certainly doesn't help the idea that he's a Tony Stark genius. It was a Dunning-Kruger level dumb statement to make.

If this statement was made in isolation I would give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he realized it was a stupid statement once he said it but he just didn't bother to correct himself. However he's made so many dumb and arrogant statements over the past few years, I assume it was just a dumb unsophisticated statement from someone who isn't that bright.