Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA07693 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 17 Apr 2001 14:38:09 +0100 Subject: Re: The Tipping Point Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 09:33:55 -0400 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "memetics list" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <20010417133412.AAA21853@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Responding to myself (not a real habit....)-
>Bringing all explanations, levels, and causes together
>is the want of consilience, since scientific perspective is 360.
I see this in today's science section....
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This theory is nuts
If you open up a can of mixed nuts, it's more than likely that you'll
find the Brazil nuts on the top. The conventional wisdom is that repeated
jostling of the can lets smaller nuts slip into local ''holes,'' leaving
the Brazil nuts on top. But now a more complete picture is emerging,
thanks to Daniel Hong and his colleagues at Lehigh University. Much as
one can think of a material's temperature as corresponding to the average
thermal motion of its molecules, it also makes sense to think of a
shaking can of nuts as having a certain temperature based on how hard
it's shaken. Hong and his colleagues have shown that different sized nuts
will have different critical temperatures that decide whether they will
flow freely like a liquid, or set like a solid. In the case of a can of
nuts, the separation of the Brazil nuts corresponds to a sort of freezing
out, much like ice coming out of water and floating on top. The novelty
in this work is that it also predicts the conditions under which
something like a denser Brazil nut would sink to the bottom of the can.
This research is far from academic as control of how granular substances
mix is at the basis of all sorts of industries from fertilizer and drug
manufacturing to breakfast cereal and nut packaging.
ref: Physical Review Letters, April 9.
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