No such thing as "Trickle Down"

[Lazaro Vega]

"Fixing" this will take more political muscle than all the steroid abusers in all the 'roid joints you'd walk into in a lifetime. That's why we don't call politicians "Buster." Their name is "Muster."

"Why it is hard to share the wealth"

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7107

[maren]

Love ya, Lazaro -- and I'm all for equitable distribution of wealth -- but I'm not sold on the "gas atoms" model of the economy. "Trickle-down" makes me think of another physical principle -- one that was never described as a law of physics until 1986!!!

Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 1038–1040 (1987)

Why the Brazil nuts are on top: Size segregation of particulate matter by shaking

Anthony Rosato

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Katherine J. Strandburg

Department of Physics, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Friedrich Prinz

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Robert H. Swendsen

Department of Physics, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

Received 20 October 1986

When a can containing one large ball and a number of smaller ones is shaken, the large ball rises to the top, even when the larger ball is more dense than the others. Similarly, a mixture of different sized particles will segregate by size when shaken. An adaptation of the Monte Carlo method is used to study this size segregation. The results show the local, geometric mechanism by which the segregation is produced. Segregation by size is to be distinguished from the more obvious sifting process which occurs when tiny grains filter down through the interstices between large particles.

©1987 The American Physical Society

So -- does this mean only small change trickles down to the masses?

[king ubu]