An Orderly Transition

The Belousov – Zhabotinsky or B-Z reaction is formed by combining several chemicals including a bromine and an acid in a Petrie dish. The solution is unstable, and in a non-equilibrium state it oscillates. The pattern, shown in this photograph, emerges slowly at first little blue dots in a red-brown solution, but accelerates into spirals and curves. 

This reaction was so counter-intuitive that in 1951 when Boris Belousov, who first observed it, tried to publish his findings the journal refused saying he must have got something in the experiment wrong. In 1961 Anatol Zhabotinsky, a grad student was able to reproduce these same effects. 

The B-Z reaction has now been recreated many times. B-Z is one of several non-equilibrium chemical reactions. The Briggs-Rauscher reaction where a beaker oscillates from clear to opaque blue or black in a pattern that can be precisely modeled mathematically.

Oscillation is feature of change in a non-equilibrium state and not just in chemicals. We are all familiar with what happens when one places a microphone too close to a speaker:  “Screeeeeeeeeeeeeek” - feedback!  The sound waves coming from the microphone are amplified through the speakers and the sound waves from the speakers are picked up by the microphone and so on, wave oscillation heard as ear splitting sound. Electric guitarists use this same principle, but control the gain to make distortion, the “dirty” or “fuzz box” sound of heavy metal music and Chicago blues.

The first law of thermodynamics is that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transferred from one form to another. The second law of thermodynamics is that in any closed or isolated system entropy (inevitable decay and decline) always increases. Based upon external input energy (growth) increases, but if the system then remains isolated decline begins. I am not a physicist, but that sounds like a recipe for oscillation.

It says to me that without some external energy input a system’s energy will decline and that system equilibrium requires input-transference balance to avoid a destructive oscillation.

Is this how things break into chaos and how order emerges from chaos? I think so and I think we know this somehow, maybe deep in our DNA. We have expressions like  “two steps forward- one step back” or the depressing inverse “one step forward-two steps back”. We observe “growth spurts”  and “growing pains” in our children, growing things accelerate and level off.

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