{"id":2088,"date":"2007-12-18T08:25:06","date_gmt":"2007-12-18T08:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/12\/18\/tree-of-science-6\/"},"modified":"2007-12-18T08:25:06","modified_gmt":"2007-12-18T08:25:06","slug":"tree-of-science-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/12\/18\/tree-of-science-6\/","title":{"rendered":"Tree of SCIENCE!!! #6"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is in honor of the cold water dripping into our kitchen cabinet yesterday:<\/p>\n

\"i-152a8a62eb67d1da467ecdabdbad4688-sm_icicle.jpg\"<\/p>\n

That’s a glass icicle, with bonus dramatic shadows. If you’re a homeowner, you might think that this stands for ice damming, but this is about SCIENCE!!! not property mishaps. This ornament stands for phase transitions.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Phase transitions are a big part of physics and chemistry. Exactly what constitutes a “phase of matter” is a little murky, and seems to proceed on a sort of Damon Knight\/ Potter Stewart rule, but transitions between phases are a rich area of study. Solid to liquid, liquid to gas, normal fluid to superfluid, thermal vapor to Bose-Einstein Condensate– you name it, there’s a community dedicated to studying it.<\/p>\n

This ornament is particularly appropriate, because it’s a striking representation of the freezing\/melting transition in water (icicles result from water melting in a warm spot, flowing to a cold one, and then re-freezing), but it’s also made of glass, and the glass transition<\/a> is a whole area of study unto itself.<\/p>\n

(You could also add meteorology as a bonus extra SCIENCE!!! for this particular ornament, as icicle formation is highly weather-dependent….)<\/p>\n

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check the bucket I put out to catch the ice melt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s ornament from the Tree of SCIENCE!!! is in honor of the cold water dripping into our kitchen cabinet yesterday: That’s a glass icicle, with bonus dramatic shadows. If you’re a homeowner, you might think that this stands for ice damming, but this is about SCIENCE!!! not property mishaps. This ornament stands for phase transitions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,50,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-physics","category-pictures","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2088\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}