Recent content by antonima

Wow, that is an awesome article, although not exactly what I meant it is quite relevant. I cannot understand the math, but even some of the conceptual stuff is interesting. Thanks for sharing. Ah, no. I managed to boil the problem down to simple algebra and absolutely no need for solving...

I skimmed the wiki on orbitals. It seems that all orbitals are symmetrical around some axis, and I'm wondering why that is. I have developed a pet theory that indicates something like orbitals and energy levels should exist when dealing with electrons and nuclei. The theory is the product of...

Well, you said that in order to have a temperature gradient you need heat flow. I then said that the Earth's atmosphere has a static pressure gradient, and then I tried brainstorming whether or not a static pressure gradient would lead to a static temperature gradient. If a static pressure...

Right, but diffusion can do work against a potential well as long as the medium is still a fluid. You got me there! Maybe the diminishing pressure of the atmosphere could be used to facilitate it? The atmosphere is very complex. In fact, many kilometers into the sky it becomes HOTTER. The...

That depends on partial pressure of the water vapor, absolute pressure and temperature. As long as there is a temperature gradient then there could be some point where the air would become supersaturated with water vapor, or at least it seems so to me. Weather is preeety complex.

Sure, but my point is that solar energy isn't necessarily required to lift the water in the water cycle. ;)

While this is true about the Earth's atmosphere, water vapor would also rise due to diffusion as long as the atmosphere was a gaseous system above 0 kelvins.

Would it be more correct to describe the electrons as rings/spheres around the nucleus rather than point particles?

This isn't as clear as I would like it to be. Instead: a single gas molecule cannot gain considerable momentum, and so velocity, from absorbing a photon. However, a macro scale gas most certainly gains translational energy by absorbing photons. Thus, two or more particles have to be involved...

I like what you did there IRT I like this problem because it of how simply it can be addressed by conservation laws. An incoming photon of light cannot raise the momentum of a gas molecule by a considerable amount because a photon carries only very little momentum. There will always be...

Hi Monte, I think that a part of the answer lies in molecular collisions. As you said yourself, infrared absorptions result in vibrational energy. It seems that when molecules collide they can then impart this vibrational energy to push off of one another, raising the translational energy of...

Yes, that is correct in just about all cases. But once at the plateau there is an equal probability of momentary entropy increase and decrease. Are degrees of freedom literally information? I do not see it that way. Degrees of freedom count the number of possible configurations of a system...

Yes! I know that his experiment (the one with a bead in a laser beam) doesn't show an overall decrease in entropy, but rather momentery decreases in entropy of a macro-scale system. I don't think that it is impossible though, and I have a hunch that he could prove that as well if he really...

Entropy of information has been used to 'defeat' maxwell's demon, but I think that it is unimaginative to consider digital as the only method of data storage and monitoring. Data comparisons can be made and orders can be executed without storing any information at all, using physical systems...

Unfortunately I do not own the Feynman Lectures. Does this by any chance have to do with Faynman's ratchet? If I understand right, Faynman proposed a brownian ratchet and then went back saying that the 'quantum nature' will not allow a brownian particle to move a ratchet, because the ratchet...