Latest science news from the arXiv.

Latest science news from the arXiv.

[Dave Korn]

  Apparently, a cow is a simple oscillator, and a herd of them is a field-full
of coupled oscillators:

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25171/

  I think we can all safely agree that this would imply that the hippo is an
astable.

  Also, does this mean that if you could persuade just one cow in a field to
repeatedly lie down and stand up at the exact resonant frequency of the
coupling, you could get runaway oscillations until the entire herd were
frantically leaping in the air and then falling to their knees as fast as they
could?

    cheers,
      DaveK

RE: Latest science news from the arXiv.

[Mike Marchywka]

----------------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 16:24:33 +0100
> From:
> To: cygwin-talk@cygwin.com
> Subject: Latest science news from the arXiv.
>
>
> Apparently, a cow is a simple oscillator, and a herd of them is a field-full
> of coupled oscillators:
>
> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25171/
>
> I think we can all safely agree that this would imply that the hippo is an
> astable.
>
> Also, does this mean that if you could persuade just one cow in a field to
> repeatedly lie down and stand up at the exact resonant frequency of the
> coupling, you could get runaway oscillations until the entire herd were
> frantically leaping in the air and then falling to their knees as fast as they
> could?

Actually a well modelled nonlinear system usually has saturation and dissipation,
so it is less likely here (unless it really happens in real life ) than in the "Assume speherical weakly coupled cow" model.
Coupled oscillators are really interesting because couplings that seem "small" as in irrelevant
can produce macroscopic effects. 
Now, if these were mortgage backed securities instead of cows, well, anything is possible.
LOL.




>
> cheers,
> DaveK
>
 		 	   		  
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Re: Latest science news from the arXiv.

[Warren Young]

On 5/18/2010 9:24 AM, Dave Korn wrote:
>
>    Apparently, a cow is a simple oscillator, and a herd of them is a field-full
> of coupled oscillators:

When you destabilize the feedback loop, you get runaway cow-tipping. 
Like dominoes.