What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

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Individual
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Re: What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

Post by Individual »

Found some stuff that are even more interesting examples than my OP.

Ferrofluids (a "fluid-solid," a substance that expresses qualities of both solids and fluids), made by suspending iron nanoparticles in a solution of water, oil and a surfactant, which reacts in interesting ways to magnetic fields:



Non-newtonian fluids (fluids that don't have consistent viscosity, i.e. they're liquids that can become solids when placed under stress):



Now are these substances more of the "liquid" (water) or more "solid" (earth) property? If each object is an octad with an indeterminable combination of each property, how does one distinguish one form of matter from another?
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kc2dpt
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Re: What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

Post by kc2dpt »

It seems your confusion is in regarding solidity and fluidity as two points on the same scale, just as red and blue are two points on the scale of photon frequency. We learn in school how water is fluid at these temperatures and solid at those temperatures. But this is not what 'solid' and 'fluid' mean in Buddhist context. They describe two different scales. A ball may be red, and also bouncy, and also smell of rubber and a second ball may be blue, not bouncy, and smell of wood. Each ball has a type of color, a type of bounciness, and a type of smell. In the same way an object will express so much of the earth property, so much of the water property, so much of the fire property, and so much of the air property.

As for your recent examples, they will express different properties depending on their environment. Just as water will express more solidity in my freezer than in my bathtub, oobleck will express more solidity when under pressure from a guy stepping on it.
- Peter

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Individual
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Re: What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

Post by Individual »

Peter wrote:It seems your confusion is in regarding solidity and fluidity as two points on the same scale, just as red and blue are two points on the scale of photon frequency.
So, let's say we were to describe this spectrum more in detail. In terms of their relative solidity (earth) and liquidity (water), how would you rank against one another:

-water (obvious liquid)
-a solid rock (obvious solid)

but also:
-gelatins
-liquid crystals
-plasmas
-ferrofluids
-non-newtonian liquids

Let's say you have something which has a roughly equal amount of the earth and liquid properties. What exactly would that be? In the case of red and blue, it would be purple.
The best things in life aren't things.

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kc2dpt
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Re: What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

Post by kc2dpt »

Individual wrote:Let's say you have something which has a roughly equal amount of the earth and liquid properties. What exactly would that be? In the case of red and blue, it would be purple.
You are still missing it. You are still regarding earth and water as akin to red and blue. Something does not have equal amounts of red and blue. Rather something is of a color halfway between the frequency of red and the frequency of blue. Red and blue are measuring the same thing. Red is not one property and blue another. They are both describing the property of color.

Water can be described in terms of it's hardness (not very) and it can be described in terms of it's fluidity (very).
A rock can be described in terms of it's hardness (very) and in terms of it's fluidity (not very).

Everything has the property of hardness, everything has the property of fluidity, everything has the property of color. If something is neither predominant in earth nor predominant in water then that's what it is. No big deal.

To put it another way, it is as if you asked about something which is halfway between salty and blue. It doesn't make any sense as those are two different properties.
- Peter

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tiltbillings
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Re: What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

Post by tiltbillings »

Peter wrote: You are still missing it.
So it would seem. This is one of the odder threads I have seen in a while.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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kc2dpt
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Re: What's a gelatin, liquid crystal, or plasma?

Post by kc2dpt »

Peter wrote:
Individual wrote:Let's say you have something which has a roughly equal amount of the earth and liquid properties. What exactly would that be? In the case of red and blue, it would be purple.
Something does not have equal amounts of red and blue. Rather something is of a color halfway between the frequency of red and the frequency of blue.
To be accurate, purple is not of a frequency between red and blue. That would be yellow, probably. Indigo is of a lesser frequency than red and violet is of a higher frequency than blue. And that's just the emission spectrum. In the absorption spectrum if you mix a pigment which absorbs everything but red and a second pigment which absorbs everything but blue you do indeed get light reflected back in the frequency of purple. Still, red and blue are not two separate properties but rather different points on the same spectrum - frequency of light.

Earth and liquid, on the other hand, describe two separate properties.
- Peter

Be heedful and you will accomplish your goal.
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