Tag Archives: point of view

Here and Now: 100% Probable

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To discover how experimentalists, as observers, generalize anything about their worlds, visit the Sampling and Statistics topic under the MENU on the RHS of this HOME page.

Basically, all anyone can sample is what is Here and what is Now. That seems obvious, but is it? When we reach out in any number of ways to sample our universe, what if nothing is there? Is there nothing because there really is nothing to be sampled? Or, is there nothing only because it is not right here, but somewhere else. It is not here because, it exists, but not now, not at the moment we tried to sample it.

We all know when we interact with anything that it exists. But does it exist if we attempt to sample it, as it eludes us?

If every time we sample something, we find it, then we say it is 100% probable. What we don’t always say is: it’s 100% probable here and now.

But what happens when it isn’t here and now? What are its chances, or its likelihood of existing then?

Many times we categorize such improbable events as nonexistent or figments of the imagination, especially in scientific inquiry where they need to be reproducible–able to be sampled over and over again. For how long?

High Curvature “Relationship”

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A high curvature relationship occurs at the beginning and the end of our two-fluid experiment.

A tiny bubble has such a high curvature/small radius that it is difficult for random vibrations to deform it.
As the water-based fluid flows into the oil-based fluid, into the crests (fingers) of the unstable waves at the boundary, their tip radii get very small and their curvature very large, thus damping out vibrations there.

In both cases (beginning and end), the curvature at the boundary of the two-fluid system is so large that the boundary cannot be made to deform. In this case, there exists no relationship across the boundary. Therefore, no recognizable existence there.

Four Basic Kinds of Relationship

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In our two-fluid experiment, where a water-based fluid tries to push an oil-based fluid out of the way across a boundary, we can describe four basic relationships. The first three relationships require a certain amount of interfacial tension at the boundary to carry interactive information from one fluid to another. The fourth and last relationship has little or no tension on the boundary. Molecular diffusion occurs and therefore we call it a degraded relationship, where, because of the static at the boundary, little information gets through. [continued]

Primitive Relationships

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The experiments Suresh Advani (University of Delaware) and I performed were classified as two-fluid problems. In such problems there are two thermodynamic systems (fluid 1 and fluid 2) that relate to one another across a boundary between the two fluids.

Thermodynamics (thermo) is a well-organized and descriptive language scientists use to examine what happens when two systems (objects in specified spaces) come together. The language of thermo specifies what is exchanged across boundaries when two or more systems interact or relate.

In our two-fluid experiments, an expanding circular droplet of a less-dense, water-based fluid is pushing a more-dense, viscous oil out of the way. This relationship is considered unstable, because the water flows easier than the sluggish oil. Because the oil cannot move fast enough out of the water’s way, the boundary between the two fluids buckles (adopts a wavy pattern like a sine wave).

At the trough of the wave, the watery fluid sees a concave-upward boundary. The oily substance sees a concave-downward one. So, not only are the fluids flowing against one another, exchanging the momentum of movement at their boundaries, but they see this exchange in starkly different ways. Each with its own perspective or point of view (POV).

For this example, then, we see that primitive relationship does not just involve the energy exchanged across a boundary between relating systems, but, also, the unique perspectives of each.