Day 4 of quantum shuffling

 

Today I almost ended up with them all on Level 1 again at one point. Then it occurred to me that the reason this hasn't happened - and I am now 80 moves in - is because it is actually an improbable situation. 

Day 3 of quantum shuffling

 

Another two rolls of the dice got me to this situation - so 42 legitimate rolls in total. Then I got stuck with a lot of disallowed rolls because it would only work if the green die came up 4. It was strangely stable in a way that I can't see being true in nature. At the end today, after 60 allowed rolls in total, I got to this

Second day of quantum shuffling

 

This is where I got to after 40 allowed moves. Today was mostly shuffling of pairs between level 1 and the ground state.

The quantum energy level shuffling experiment again

 Last May I had a short look at an old experiment from the Nuffield A Level Physics course that investigated quantum shuffling of particles on energy levels. More exciting things were happening and I didn't get far with it. We won't be going very far for a while so ....

The green squares are the particles and they all sit on energy level 1 at the start. Thus there are only 6 quanta of energy to share out. If one loses a quantum, another can gain. To choose randomly which, there are two dice. The blue decides which goes up and the green decides which goes down. Last time I had problems if the one to go down started in the ground state, level 0. This time I decided to rethrow both dice if such a forbidden move came up. It's proving tedious with a lot of rethrows. After 20 legal throws, here's what emerged.

Hayeswater Aqueduct and Boredale Hause - a possible explanation

 Our exploration of Boredale revealed that a pipeline extends all the way down to Penrith.

These covers are near the top.

The pipeline is obvious in the scree filled gully.

The pipeline must go under the path.

A bit of Internet research shows that Hayeswater was dammed in 1908 to provide water for Penrith. A filter house was built later below Hayeswater https://thefilterhouse.co.uk/history I had got it into my head that an aqueduct needed to be always heading downhill so I was expecting some sort of tunel through the hillside but an inspection of the original Wainwright Far Eastern guide showed that the aqueduct went down through the filter house into the valley at Hartsop and then back up the slanting path from Dubhow to Boredale Hause (this is not shown in the later editions that I now prefer) - see Angletarn Pikes page 4. I checked on the maps. Boredale Hause is 399m above sealevel but crucially Hayeswater is about 420m. If you put water into a u-tube it should flow down and then back up to its original height. Here it doesn't have to flow up as far so will be able to go over Boredale Hause and back down to Penrith. The aqeuduct is actually a pipeline. When I can get back into the lab, I intend to build a model.

Get a grip!

 

Running on icy surfaces is not much fun but it was possible with these pull-on studs. They dramatically reduce the surface area on which my weight acts. Pressure = force/area so same weight on smaller area means increased pressure. More pressure means more damage - the studs go into the ice and give me something to push against. I know that with ice skates, the pressure is enough to melt the ice. I wonder if that happens with these studs, and if so, how would I tell?

Eddy formation

 

I was interested in the number of eddies being formed on the stream at Patterdale. It is clear that they were forming where a fast layer of water down the middle of the stream made contact with a stationary layer at the side of the stream. There must be shear forces involved. So far the best that I can find is that the process is associated with turbulent flow and a high Reynold's number but I was hoping to find out how the forces operated to pull the water first backwards and then round into the right direction.