The Art of Physics by Zahaan Bharmal

Author:Zahaan Bharmal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ITHAKA
Published: 2024-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

1 ‘How Economists Have Misjudged Global Warming’, Robert U. Ayres. Reprinted from World Watch Magazine, September/October 2001. https://cooperative-individualism.org/ayers-robert_how-economists-have-misjudged-global-warming-2001.htm.

Chapter 5

THE PHYSICS OF BREAKING UP

Before meeting my wife, I had a relatively short – but volatile – history of dating. I had one or two good relationships where there was some give and take and enough trust to survive the occasional setback, and where actions were seen in the best light. Unfortunately, I also had a few that were less positive; relationships that often felt one misplaced word away from a blazing row, where neither one of us was ever quite sure what the other was thinking, and that more often than not ended with me getting dumped. There are a lot of ways to look at relationships, but as a physicist, I think the difference between good and bad relationships comes down to one thing: stability.

The good relationships were inherently stable. A physicist might compare the two people in a stable relationship to two balls in a valley. Imagine what would happen if you gave either of these balls a small nudge. What would happen? They likely wouldn’t go very far. The force of gravity and the curvature of the valley would mean that they would roll back down, meeting again in the centre. Two balls in a valley is an example of what physicists call a stable system.

The bad relationships on the other hand were characterised by a lack of stability. Imagine the same two balls but this time balanced on top of a hill. What would happen now if you gave either of them a nudge? They are the same balls, experiencing the same forces, but this time they would behave very differently. They would likely move a lot further, maybe careering all the way down the hill. This is an example of an unstable system.

You don’t need a history of failed relationships to intuitively grasp this notion of instability. Whether it is emotions, financial markets or nuclear reactors, instability can be defined in a similar way. It can be understood as the tendency for individuals or things to behave in an unpredictable, volatile, changeable or erratic manner. Like the ball on a hill, when things are unstable, the smallest nudges can sometimes lead to big changes.

Instability has been evident in a very public way in recent years in one specific – but utterly fundamental – aspect of our society: our democratic elections. On 23 June 2016, I, like so many others, went to bed with a feeling of certainty. It was the day of Britain’s historic referendum to leave the European Union, and all signs pointed to a decisive Remain victory. The day before, an online Populus poll – the last conducted before voting began – gave Remain a 10-point lead, 55 to 45. The last thing I remember reading before shutting my laptop on that Wednesday night was an election forecasting expert saying that ‘if Leave won, it would represent the biggest polling error in 25 years’.

Membership of the European Union had long been a thorn in the side of British prime ministers.

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