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Re: [OM] IMG: The Red Carpet

Subject: Re: [OM] IMG: The Red Carpet
From: Mike Gordon via olympus <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 16:15:24 -0400
Cc: usher99@xxxxxxx
Standing Pat Moose  writes with enumerating CN agreeing:


<<<Over the last month, we've tromped through woods with increasingly deep 
carpets of fallen leaves. Our sample is in the millions, but our sampling 
woefully casual. I'm sticking with 50/50. ;-)

Jeez, this is a tough crowd.  On my run this AM I tried to experiment a bit.  
Those Sugar Maple leaves with long stems with stem/max leaf length ratio of 
about 1 that were flat or curled up (neg camber?) did not tumble but fluttered 
down quite consistently landing face side up most times.  As already posted it 
would take counting over 400 leaves (cleared fixed  area under tree in dead 
calm conditions) to even show a likely 
vastly overstated 55/45 distribution is different from 50/50 and many many more 
to show any significant difference in a smaller preponderance of face side-up.  
One must this resort to experiment/induction.

I chose a representative long stem variant (perhaps 25% of the leaves) and 
stood on my chair (after made coffee this AM) and dropped it 20 times.  Landed 
upright 18/20.  Q.E.D.?

http://tinyurl.com/palbm3d

stem/max length was 11.7/11.5 cm

My conjecture is that Sugar Maple leaves are not equivalent to tossing a fair 
coin.  So can one model how they flutter down?  Yikes,  is that complex.  
Physicists have pondered that and even the more simple case of paper fluttering 
to the ground for many moons.  It appears the ultra great Scottish 
physicist/mathematician James Clark Maxwell was one of the first to describe 
this. (BTW he was the first to come up with a method to produce durable color 
photographs. )  Looking at his paper from Trinity College in 1854,  it is 
surprising that it is all qualitative.  Some of the aerodynamic principles had 
not yet been described and there was as yet no means to compute even a 2 
dimensional solution to the Navier-Stokes equations--requires a good PC.  
Others have hoped to model a leaf falling, but that requires a 3D solution to 
the Navier-Stokes equations and that appears to be beyond what is currently 
possible, as best I can tell. 

So, no, I do not concede this point one bit.  The lesson may be that is is best 
to never relinquish access to one's inner 5-year old as good science can 
result.  Marnie assures me I have no worries in that
department especially after she witnessed my leaf experiment. 

I am told that I need to report to the front yard "lab" tomorrow to gather up 
errant experimental subjects---see below.

http://tinyurl.com/ogetr6l

No, not quite 50-50, Mike
-- 
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