Original Message: ----------------- From: Bruce Bostwick [email protected] Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 17:30:53 -0600 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Incoming!
>Unless the fluid flow is completely laminar (which is extremely rare >in nature), there's turbulence involved, which is naturally chaotic. >Which is why I mentioned that that was a less informative answer than >it might appear. (i.e. it was a joke .. :) OK, fair enough....but quantum chaos comes about so quickly with virtually anything (you weren't here but I did a thought experiment that showed that h-bar introduces chaos in a billard ball though experiment in only 1-1.2 seconds). So, I guess I just don't think about that, because it's true of everything and not useful. > OK, in what sense are you talking about fractals here. In > particular, why shouldn't standard wave theory work? > > Dan M. >If it were wave action, also, I'd expect some reverse flow in the >cycle at least right after the front arrived. From the description, >it sounded more like the wind speed varied between zero and maximum in >one direction .. (to OP) right? I model phenomenon for a living. Most of it is complex enough so that it is impossible to sit down and calculate it from first principles. But, one can do phenomenology. When I was saying wave action, it was because that the first order fit to what Nick described was A(1+sin(wt)). Clearly there is a constant as well as sin term for the wind to go from zero to high to zero. Since Doug was talking about hiking in the Sierra, I immediately thought of many possible combinations that could results in this phenomenon (just think of all the valleys and canyons and natural resonences). But, in the absense of more data, I tend to think of the simplest phenomenology I can. Plus, chaos and fractal are popular physics buzz words. Most of the time, they have been misused. In particular, I don't understand how fractional dimensions are particularly useful in a modeling a pehomenon in which the information given matches A(1+sin(wt). I realize now that the reference to chaos was a joke, but I still don't understand what brought non-integer dimenisons to mind. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com – Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft® Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
