262. Video of the day: so, what is this “Non-equilibrium Phenomena” stuff about?

4 Comments

1. Lubos Motl says:

   February 15, 2009 at 10:13 pm

   That’s interesting. In Russian, you would normally omit “is” from most sentences. In your title, you included it twice and you also replaced “stuff” by “staff” – the latter being a set of employees rather than a material.

   More importantly, isn’t the video a case of equilibrium phenomena rather than non-equilibrium phenomena?

   Sorry for being so picky but more than 1/2 of words in your title, which is your contribution here, seem to be flawed.

   Reply
   • Dmitry says:

     February 15, 2009 at 11:45 pm

     That’s interesting. In Russian, you would normally omit “is” from most sentences. In your title, you included it twice and you also replaced “stuff” by “staff” – the latter being a set of employees rather than a material.

     OMG, you are absolutely right, sorry for that and thanks!

     More importantly, isn’t the video a case of equilibrium phenomena rather than non-equilibrium phenomena?

     Although I did not say that video gives an answer to the question… do you really think that the fork and the spoon still, at this very moment, stay there on that glass? Life and its interaction with forks and spoons is the most interesting non-equilibrium phenomenon in Nature.

     Sorry for being so picky but more than 1/2 of words in your title, which is your contribution here, seem to be flawed.

     Seems so LOL Today is Sunday, can I loose focus a bit at least on Sundays?

     Cheers,
     Dmitry.

     Reply
2. Lubos Motl says:

   February 16, 2009 at 8:58 am

   Dear Dmitry, do I think that the fork and spoon still stay on that glass?

   Nope, because the person has manually removed them at 2:44 of the video. But I don’t think it proves that it was a non-equilibrium phenomenon.

   When the visible hand of the Creator is removed, it was an equilibrium phenomenon.

   It could have been an unstable equilibrium but because of the tiny yet sufficient friction and non-uniformities on the surface, it was actually a stable equilibrium.

   Also, I thought that the term “non-equilibrium” was reserved for *thermodynamic* time-dependent phenomena, anyway.

   Reply
   • Dmitry says:

     February 17, 2009 at 6:17 pm

     Dear Lubos,

     Nope, because the person has manually removed them at 2:44 of the video.

     The action of the person is a genuine non-equilibrium phenomenon as life itself is Take a can, put some bacteria into it (and material for them to feed with), close the can and enjoy non-equilibrium phenomena – for a rather long time, until the population does out.

     When the visible hand of the Creator is removed, it was an equilibrium phenomenon.

     It could have been an unstable equilibrium but because of the tiny yet sufficient friction and non-uniformities on the surface, it was actually a stable equilibrium.

     Let us call it quasi-stable, that is, unstable w.r.t. not so small perturbations

     Also, I thought that the term ?non-equilibrium? was reserved for *thermodynamic* time-dependent phenomena, anyway.

     Not sure why you want to use the term in so narrow sense, for example, Wald diagrammantic technique used to study turbulence belongs to the class of non-equilibrium diagrammatic techniques.

     Cheers,
     Dmitry.

     Reply

Leave a Comment