A response to a query ('why, when I put a duvet cover in the washing machine, with other items, they all end up inside the duvet cover when the programme finishes') addressed by a scientist mooting a hypothesis by analogy:
"I'd like to argue this might be a little bit like cell biology…So I have thought about this on a weekly basis for as long as I can remember, and I think what might be going on here is, obviously when you've got a duvet cover and if you have not sort of buttoned it up before putting it in the wash, you've got a very wide opening, so that's easy statistically for things to enter it, and then as it twists around in the wash, it's actually harder to leave. So, what you've got is kind of a difficulty gradient, things are more likely to go in than they are to come out; and my reckoning is if that keeps happening for a long enough period, enough cycles, eventually everything ends up inside. And the reason I kind of try to claim that's like cell biology is sometimes, certain substance, it is much easier for them to get into the cell, through the cell membrane because of the way it is made than it is for them to randomly diffuse out again. And that's a really sort of clever, not kind of actively driven way, of creating order, or something really weird like you observe in your washing machine – that's my theory anyway and I'm sticking to it."
Dr Penny Sarchet, Managing Editor of New Scientist was talking on an episode ('Answers to Your Science Questions') of BBC Inside Science.
Read examples of scientific analogies
(The phrase 'that's my theory anyway and I'm sticking to it' is something of a slogan, but the idea was clearly presented as a conjecture, not a formally worked up theory. Unfortunately many learners and lay people do not appreciate how 'theory' is understood in science. Read about misconceptions of scientific theories.)
