The Physics of Peer Support

The physics of Cohesion, Adhesion, Surface Tension, Bubbles and Foam Structures resemble Peer Support and Peer Networks. Here’s a refresher on the basics.

The physics of Cohesion, Adhesion, Surface Tension, Bubbles and Foam Structures resemble Peer Support and Peer Networks. Here’s a refresher on the basics.

Surface tension is caused by cohesion, the attraction of molecules to like molecules. At the surface of a glass of water, the molecules are pulled inwards more by the water molecules than by the air molecules. Surface tension can be seen at left, with the paper-clip ‘floating’ on the surface of the water.

Surface tension causes the surface area of a liquid to shrink until it has the lowest surface area possible. Surface tension causes drops of water to form a sphere, which has the smallest possible surface area for a given volume. That’s what creates the spherical shapes of water droplets.

Adhesion, the attraction of dissimilar molecules, is what causes the surface of liquid to be attracted to another surface. If a tube is sufficiently narrow and the liquid adhesion to its walls is sufficiently strong, surface tension can draw liquid up the tube, which is why plants can lift water from the ground to great heights within their roots.

 

 

n another article I describe Synergy, as defined by Buckminster Fuller, which is the behavior of a whole system that is unpredicted by the behavior of the parts taken separately. Within a group of people, for example, the sum of the relationships is greater than the sum of the individuals. The illustration is made by connecting all the dots in this image.

 

The connecting lines can also be considered in three dimensions like the connected surface areas of bubbles. Consider what happens as the individuals get closer to one another, as this packed group shows:

 

 

Soap Bubbles

At a point where three or more bubbles meet, they form three bubble walls joining along a single line. The surface tension is the same in each of the three bubbles and the three angles between equal at 120°. This is also why the cells of a beehive have the same 120° angles that form hexagon tubes.

Truncated Octahedron

Soap bubbles are physical illustrations of the complex mathematical problem of minimal surface. “Two merged soap bubbles provide the optimum way of enclosing two given volumes of air of different size with the least surface area. This has been coined the double bubble theorem.” Kind of reminds me of Enterprising Couples.

Bubbles packed together in a foam have much more complicated shapes.

In 1887, Lord Kelvin proposed that space could be partitioned into cells of equal volume with the least area of surface between them. In 1993, Denis Weaire and Robert Phelan, two physicists based at Trinity College Dublin found that in computer simulations of foam, a lattice of truncated octahedrons was a better solution than Kelvin had proposed. The structure looks like this:

   

MY POINT:

Look to ‘creation’ for clues. You’ll find solutions waiting to be replicated and applied to other issues, like creating a supportive group of peers.

Example: Velcro. 

Hook and eye fasteners have been around for centuries, but in 1941 George de Mestral looked (under a microscope ) at the burrs that were caught in his trousers after returning from a hunting trip with his dog in the Alps. It took him ten years to be able to manufacture what he saw, and his ‘invention’ didn’t become popular until NASA used it in the mid 60’s. (NASA is falsely thought to have invented it.)

The big breakthrough George de Mestral made was to think about hook-and-eye closures on a greatly reduced scale. That’s what I’m suggesting you do with these ideas about the physics of bubbles and peer support.

Think about peer support on a different scale, or in regard to Six Degrees, Collective Intelligence or Synergy. You have the Internet, remember?

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truncated_octahedron
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_tension
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velcro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_bubble