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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