Re: [FRIAM] Household vortices, redux
Nick and all, If the following comment has already been made (and disposed of), please accept my apologies (the house was full of visitors for a while and I stopped keeping up with my mail). One thing that leaps to my eye in the description of the empirical experiment made by Nick, and suggested to Steve by Nick, is the opacity of the pull the plug part-- both figurative and literal opacity, since (I am assuming) Nick hasn't got one of those nifty all-glass_ sinks that used to show up in commercials for Drano). Is it possible that there is some structure of a vorticial sort located (just) out of sight, within the water that is exiting the basin (and the drain pipe through which it is exiting), and that the energy/organization/whatever of *that* part of the total water/basin/drain pipe system is closely (though obscurely) coupled to the visible vortice(s), in such a way that the observed phenomena follow more obviously from the facts-including-the-hidden-subsystem than they seem to be doing from only the facts-not- including-the-hidden-subsystem? (Peter L., does that sound even remotely reasonable from your informed perspective on fluid flow?) You and I are the only two participants in that discussion to have presented any empirical evidence. In the spirit of experimental collegiality, would you try my experiment, and report back to me. Fill a basin with water Set it to spinning in a concerted way. Be careful not to impose any more turbulence than you have to. Just help the water to decide which way it is going to spin. Now pull the plug. Watch the water level fall while also watching the organization of the vortex. At some point the natural vortex will fall in line with the artificial vortex you have imposed, or vv. When that happens, the rate at which the water line moves down the basin wall will slow dramatically while the vortex spins ferociously. You will think for a moment this could go on forever and then it doesn´t. If the gradient is the water, above, no water below gradient, AND the gradient dissipation consists of moving the water downward (all suspicious assumptions), then the vortex is certainly slowing the dissipation of that gradient. If, on the other hand, the gradient has something to do with energy, which I don´t understand, obviously¸ then somebody like SG might argue that the very ferocity of the ineffectually spinning vortex is nature´s way of working off the energy gradient, like somebody exercising after a large thanksgiving dinner. The idea would be that a ferociously spinning vortex is a better way to dissipate the potential energy in the water than having the water flow down through the drain. So nature chooses that path. Thus, the same facts (the formation of the vortex slows the draining of the water) could be seen as supporting or countering the theory that dissipative structures hasten dissipation. Which means I have to have a better idea of what is being dissipated by a dissipatory structure. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org http://www.cusf.org/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Household vortices, redux
Lee, Yep! There is that little grid in the mouth of the drain and the little tornado thingy generally forms on the hole at the center of that grid. Doesn't explain why the water leaving the drain starts to slow down when the natural vortex forms, by comparison with the circumstance in which I don't decide for the vortex which way to form. The phenomenon is: if you impart a turn to the water before you pull the plug, it takes as much as 2 and a half times longer for the basin to drain. Anybody else observe that? Are you asking why does a vortex form at all? Are you assuming that the drain is rifled in some sense and that a vortex wouldn't form without the rifling. Somehow I doubt that. N Pull the plug is, in my case, to remove the thing that ... um ... plugs the drain. One way to impart a spin on the water is to give the plug -- actually a strainer with a rubber seal on the bottom -- a twist as you pull it. Not sure that works as well as actually paddling the water around in the basin to get it turning before you pull the plug. -Original Message- From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of lrudo...@meganet.net Sent: Saturday, July 02, 2011 12:16 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Cc: Steve Smith Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Household vortices, redux Nick and all, If the following comment has already been made (and disposed of), please accept my apologies (the house was full of visitors for a while and I stopped keeping up with my mail). One thing that leaps to my eye in the description of the empirical experiment made by Nick, and suggested to Steve by Nick, is the opacity of the pull the plug part-- both figurative and literal opacity, since (I am assuming) Nick hasn't got one of those nifty all-glass_ sinks that used to show up in commercials for Drano). Is it possible that there is some structure of a vorticial sort located (just) out of sight, within the water that is exiting the basin (and the drain pipe through which it is exiting), and that the energy/organization/whatever of *that* part of the total water/basin/drain pipe system is closely (though obscurely) coupled to the visible vortice(s), in such a way that the observed phenomena follow more obviously from the facts-including-the-hidden-subsystem than they seem to be doing from only the facts-not- including-the-hidden-subsystem? (Peter L., does that sound even remotely reasonable from your informed perspective on fluid flow?) You and I are the only two participants in that discussion to have presented any empirical evidence. In the spirit of experimental collegiality, would you try my experiment, and report back to me. Fill a basin with water Set it to spinning in a concerted way. Be careful not to impose any more turbulence than you have to. Just help the water to decide which way it is going to spin. Now pull the plug. Watch the water level fall while also watching the organization of the vortex. At some point the natural vortex will fall in line with the artificial vortex you have imposed, or vv. When that happens, the rate at which the water line moves down the basin wall will slow dramatically while the vortex spins ferociously. You will think for a moment this could go on forever and then it doesn´t. If the gradient is the water, above, no water below gradient, AND the gradient dissipation consists of moving the water downward (all suspicious assumptions), then the vortex is certainly slowing the dissipation of that gradient. If, on the other hand, the gradient has something to do with energy, which I don´t understand, obviously¸ then somebody like SG might argue that the very ferocity of the ineffectually spinning vortex is nature´s way of working off the energy gradient, like somebody exercising after a large thanksgiving dinner. The idea would be that a ferociously spinning vortex is a better way to dissipate the potential energy in the water than having the water flow down through the drain. So nature chooses that path. Thus, the same facts (the formation of the vortex slows the draining of the water) could be seen as supporting or countering the theory that dissipative structures hasten dissipation. Which means I have to have a better idea of what is being dissipated by a dissipatory structure. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ http://www.cusf.org http://www.cusf.org/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St
Re: [FRIAM] Household vortices, redux
Are you asking why does a vortex form at all? No. Are you assuming that the drain is rifled in some sense and that a vortex wouldn't form without the rifling. No, that hadn't occurred to me, and I don't think (having done my share of household-level plumbing) that drains are rifled in any sense. Like Isaac Newton (not Abraham Lincoln's secretary of agriculture, who should be better known than he is for having written there is no logic so irresistible as the logic of statistics; some other guy of the same name), I am not feigning (or framing) hypotheses on these matters, at the moment anyway. I was mainly pointing out that your reported observation, about the (great) slowness to drain of a vortex-infested sinkful of water, *is* an observation *about a sink full of water*, not (just) about the visible part of the water, or even (just) about the water and the visible surfaces of the sink. At least part of the water that is already out of sight (at any particular time during the process of draining the sink) is most definitely mechanically involved with whatever is happening, as is at least part of the sink (the top bits of the drainpipe) that is out of sight during the whole experiment, because that water (rather, the outer layers thereof) is touching that part of the sink. Like the man said, no system is an island, entire of itself; every system is a subsystem of the Universe, a part of the main ... And therefore never send to know for whom entropy increases; it increases for thee. --Not that I'm framing any hypotheses about order or disorder, mind you. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
