Tag: simulations

Poincaré, inertia, and a common misconception

A historical, and ongoing, alternative conception

Keith S. Taber

"…and eleventhly Madame Curie…" Henri Poincaré enjoying small talk at a physics conference (image source: 'Marie Curie and Poincaré talk at the 1911 Solvay Conference', Wikipedia)

One of the most fundamental ideas in physics, surely taught in every secondary school science curriculum around the world, is also the focus of one of the most common alternative conceptions documented in science education. Inertia. Much research in the latter part of the twentieth century has detailed how most people have great trouble with this very simple idea.

But that would likely not have surprised the nineteenth century French physicist (and mathematician and philosopher) Henri Poincaré in the least. Over a century ago he had this to say about the subject of Newton's first law, inertia,

"The principle of inertia. A body acted on by no force can only move uniformly in a straight line.

Is this a truth imposed a priori upon the mind? If it were so, how could the Greeks have failed to recognise it? How could they have believed that motion stops when the cause which gave birth to it ceases? Or again that every body if nothing prevents, will move in a circle, the noblest of motions?

If it is said that the velocity of a body can not change if there is no reason for it to change, could it not be maintained just as well that the position of this body can not change, or that the curvature of its trajectory can not change, if no external cause intervenes to modify them?

Is the principle of inertia, which is not an a priori truth, therefore an experimental fact? But has any one ever experimented on bodies withdrawn from the action of every force? and, if so, how was it known that these bodies were subjected to no force?"

Poincaré, 1902/1913/2015

There is quite a lot going on in that quote, so it is worth breaking it down.

The principle of inertia

"The principle of inertia. A body acted on by no force can only move uniformly in a straight line."

Poincaré, 1902/1913/2015

We might today choose to phrase this differently – at least in teaching. Perhaps along the lines that

a body remains at rest, or moving with uniform motion, unless it is acted upon by a net (overall) force

That's a pretty simple idea.

  • If you want something that is stationary to start moving, you need to apply a force to it. Otherwise it will remain stationary. And:
  • If you want something that is moving with constant velocity to slow down (decelerate), speed up (accelerate), or change direction, you need to apply a force to it. Otherwise it will carry on moving in the same direction at the same speed.

A simple idea, but one which most people struggle with!

It is worth noting that Poincaré's formulation seems simpler than the versions more commonly presented in school today. He does not make reference to a body at rest; and we might detect a potential ambiguity in what is meant by "can only move uniformly in a straight line".

Is the emphasis:

  • can only move uniformly in a straight line:
    • i.e., ⟨ can only ⟩ ⟨ move uniformly in a straight line ⟩, or
  • can only move uniformly in a straight line:
    • i.e., ⟨ can only move ⟩ ⟨ uniformly in a straight line ⟩

That is, must such a body "move uniformly in a straight line" or must such a body, if moving, "move uniformly in a straight line"? A body acted on by no force may be stationary.

Perhaps this is less ambiguous in the original French? But I suspect that, as a physicist, Poincairé did not, particularly, see the body at rest as being much of a special case.

To most people the distinction between something stationary and something moving is very salient (evolution has prepared us to notice movement). But to a physicist the more important distinction is between any body at constant velocity, and one accelerating* – and a body not moving has constant velocity (of 0 ms-1!)

*and for a physicist accelerating usually includes decelerating, as that is just acceleration with a negative vale, or indeed positive acceleration in a different direction. These 'simplifications' seem very neat – to the initiated (but perhaps not to novices!)

A historical scientific conception

Poincaré then asks:

Is this a truth imposed a priori upon the mind? If it were so, how could the Greeks have failed to recognise it? How could they have believed that motion stops when the cause which gave birth to it ceases?"

Poincaré, 1902/1913/2015

Poincairé asks a rhetorical question: "Is this a truth imposed a priori upon the mind?" Rhetorical, as he immediately suggests the answer. No, it cannot be.

Science is very much an empirical endeavour. The world is investigated by observation, indeed often observation of the effects of interventions (i.e., experiments).

In this way, it diverges from a rationalist approach to understanding the world based on reflection and reasoning that occurs without seeking empirical evidence.

An aside on simulations and perpetual change

Yet, even empirical science depends on some (a priori) metaphysical commitments that cannot themselves be demonstrated by scientific observation (e.g., Taber, 2013). As one example, the famous 'brain in a vat' scenario (that informed films such as The Matrix) asks how we could know that we really experience an external world rather than a very elaborate virtual reality fed directly into our central nervous system (assuming we have such a thing!) 1

Science only makes sense if we believe that the world we experience is an objective reality originating outside our own minds
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)

Despite this, scientists operate on the assumption this is a physical world (that we all experience), and one that has a certain degree of stability and consistency. 2 The natural scientist has to assume this is not a capricious universe if science (a search for the underlying order of the world) is to make sense!

It may seem this (that we live in is an objective physical world that has a certain degree of stability and consistency) is obviously the case, as our observations of the world find this stability. But not really: rather, we impose an assumption of an underlying stability, and interpret accordingly. The sun 'rises' every day. (We see stability.) But the amount of daylight changes each day. (We observe change, but assume, and look for, and posit, some underlying stability to explain this.)

Continental drift, new comets, evolution of new species and extinction of others, supernovae, the appearance of HIV and COVID, increasing IQ (disguised by periodically renormalising scoring), climate change, the expanding universe, plant growth, senile dementia, rotting fruit, printers running out of ink, lovers falling out of love, et cetera,…are all assumed to be (and subsequently found to be) explainable in terms of underlying stable and consistent features of the world!

But it would be possible to consider nothing stays the same, and seek to explain away any apparent examples of stability!

Parmenides thought change is impossible

Heraclitus though everything was in flux

An a priori?

So Poincaré was asking if the principle of is inertia was something that would appear to us as a given; is inertia something that seems a necessary and obvious feature of the world (which it probably does to most physicists – but that is after years of indoctrination into that perspective).

But, Poincaré was pointing out, we know that for centuries people did not think that objects not subject any force would continue to move with constant velocity.

There were (considered to be) certain natural motions, and these had a teleological aspect. So, heavy objects, that were considered mainly earth naturally fell down to their natural place on the ground. 3 Once there, mission accomplished (so to speak), they would stop moving. No further explanation was considered necessary.

Violent motions were (considered to be) different as they needed an active cause – such as a javelin moving through the air because someone had thrown it. Yet, clearly (it was believed), the athlete could only impart a finite motion to the javelin, which it would soon exhaust, so the javelin would (naturally) stop soon enough.

Today, such ideas are seen as alternative conceptions (misconceptions), but for hundreds of years these ideas were largely taken as self-evident and secure principles describing aspects of the world. The idea that the javelin might carry on moving for ever if it was 'left to its own devices' seemed absurd. (And to most people today who are not physicists or science teachers, it probably still does!)

An interesting question is if, and if so, to what extent, the people who become physicists and physics teachers start out with intuitions more aligned with the principles of physics than most of their classmates.

"Assuming that there is significant variation in the extent to which our intuitive physics matches what we are taught in school, I would expect that most physics teachers are among those to whom the subject seemed logical and made good sense when they were students. I have no evidence for this, but it just seems natural that these students would have enjoyed and continued with the subject.

If I am right about this intuition, then this may be another reason why physics is so hard for some of our students. Not only do they have to struggle with subject matter that seems counterintuitive, but the very people who are charged with helping them may be those who instinctively think most differently from the way in which they do."

Taber, 2004, p.124

Another historical scientific conception

And Poincaré went on:

"Or again that every body if nothing prevents, will move in a circle, the noblest of motions?"

Poincaré, 1902/1913/2015

It was also long thought that in the heavens bodies naturally moved spontaneously in circles – a circle being a perfect shape, and the heavens being a perfect place.

Orbital motion – once viewed to be natural (i.e., not requiring any further explanation) and circular in 'the heavens'.
(Image by WikiImages from Pixabay: Body sizes and separations not to the same scale!)

It is common for people to feel that what seems natural does not need further explanation (Watts & Taber, 1996) – even though most of what we consider natural is likely just familiarity with common phenomena. We start noticing how the floor arrests the motion of falling objects very young in life, so by the time we have language to help reflect on this, we simply explain this as motion stopping because the floor was in the way! Similarly, reaction forces are not obvious when an object rests on another – a desk, a shelf, etc – as the object cannot fall 'because it is supported'.

Again, we (sic, we the initiated) now think that without an acting centripetal force, an orbiting body would move off at a tangent – but that would have seemed pretty bizarre for much of European history.

The idea that bodies moved in circles (as the fixed stars seemed to do) was maintained despite extensive observational evidence collected over centuries that the planets appeared to do something quite different. Today Kepler's laws are taught in physics, including that the solar system's orbiting bodies move (almost) in ellipses. ('Almost', as they bodies perturb each other a little.)

But when Kepler tried to fit observations to theory by adopting Copernicus's 'heliocentric' model of the Earth and planets orbiting the Sun (Earth and other planets, we would say), he still struggled to make progress for a considerable time because of an unquestioned assumption that the planetary motions had to be circular, or some combination of multiple circles.

Learners' alternative conceptions

These historical ideas are of more than historical interest. Many people, research suggests most people, today share similar intuitions.

  • Objects will naturally come to a stop when they have used up their imparted motion without the need for any forces to act.
  • Something that falls to the floor does not need a force to act on it to stop it moving, as the ground is in its way.
  • Moons and planets continue in orbits because there is no overall force acting on them.

The vast majority of learners some to school science holding versions of such alternative conceptions.

Read about common alternative conceptions related to Newton's first law

Read about common alternative conceptions related to Newton's second law

The majority of learners also leave school holding versions of such alternative conceptions – even if some of them have mastered the ability to usually respond to physics test questions as if they accepted a different worldview.

The idea that objects soon stop moving once the applied force ceases to act may be contrary to physics, but it is not, of course, contrary to common experience – at least not contrary to common experience as most people perceive it.

Metaphysical principles

Poincaré recognised this.

"If it is said that the velocity of a body can not change if there is no reason for it to change [i.e. the principle of inertia],

could it not be maintained just as well that

the position of this body can not change, or

that the curvature of its trajectory can not change,

if no external cause intervenes to modify them?"

Poincaré, 1902/1913/2015 (emphasis added)

After all, as Poincairé pointed out, there seems no reason, a priori, that is intuitively, to assume the world must work according to the principle of inertia (though some physicists and science teachers whom have been indoctrinated over many years may have come to think otherwise – of course after indoctrination is not a priori!), rather than assuming, say, that force must act for movement to occur and/or that force must act to change an orbit.

Science as an empirical enterprise

Science teachers might reply, that our initial intuitions are not the point, because myriad empirical tests have demonstrated the principle of inertia. But Poincairé suggested this was strictly not so,

"Is the principle of inertia, which is not an a priori truth, therefore an experimental fact? But has any one ever experimented on bodies withdrawn from the action of every force? and, if so, how was it known that these bodies were subjected to no force?"

Poincaré, 1902/1913/2015

For example, if we accept the ideas of universal gravitation, than anywhere in the universe a body will be subject to gravitational attractions (that is, forces). A body could only be completely free of this by being in a universe of its own with no other gravitating bodies. Then we might think we could test, in principle at least, whether the body "acted on by no force can only move uniformly in a straight line".

Well, apart from a couple of small difficulties. There would be no observers in this universe to see, as we have excluded all other massive bodies. And if this was the only body there, it would be the only frame of reference available – a frame of reference in which it was always stationary. It would always be at the centre of, and indeed would be the extent of, its universe.

Poincaré and pedagogic awareness

Poincaré was certainly not denying the principle of inertia so fundamental to mechanics. But he was showing that he appreciated that a simple principle which seems (comes to seem?) so basic and obvious to the inducted physics expert:

  • was hard won in the history of science
  • in not 'given' in intuition
  • is not the only possible basic principle on which a mechanics (in some other universe) could be based
  • is contrary to immediate experience (that is, to those who have not been indoctrinated to 'see' resistive forces sch as friction acting everywhere)
  • could never be entirely demonstrated in a pure form, but rather must be inferred from experimental tests of more complex situations where we will only deduce the principle of inertia if we assume a range of other principles (about the action of gravitational fields, air resistance, etc.)

Poincaré may have been seen as one of the great physicists of his time, but his own expertise certainly did not him appreciating the challenges facing the learner of physics, or indeed the teacher of physics.

Work cited:
Notes

1 With current human technology we cannot achieve this – even the best virtual worlds clearly do not yet come close to the real one! But that argument falls away if 'the real' world we experience is such a virtual reality created by very advanced technology, and what we think of as virtual worlds are low definition simulations being created within that! (After all, when people saw the first jumpy black-and-white movies, they then came out from the cinema into a colourful, smooth and high definition world.) If you have ever awaken from a dream, only to later realise you are still asleep, and had been dreaming of being asleep in the dream, then you may appreciate how such nesting of worlds could work.

Probably no one actually believes they are a brain in a vat, but how would we know. There is an argument that

  • 1) the evolution of complex life is a very slow process that requires a complex ecosystem, but
  • 2) once humans (or indeed non-humans) have the technology to create convincing virtual worlds this can be done very much more quickly, and with much less resource [i.e., than the evolution of the physical world which within which the programmers of the simulations themselves live]. So,
  • 3) if we are living in a phase of the universe where such technology has been achieved, then we would expect there to be a great many more such virtual worlds than planets inhabited by life forms with the level of self-consciousness to think about whether they are in a simulation.4 So,
  • 4) [if we are living in a phase of the universe where such technology has been achieved] we would be much more likely to be living in one of these worlds (a character in a very complex simulation) than an actual organic being. 5

2 That is, not a simulation where an adolescent programmer is going to suddenly increase gravity or add a new fundamental force just to make things more interesting.

3 Everything on earth was considered to be made up of different proportions of the four elements, which in terms of increasing rarity were earth, water, air and fire. The rocks of the earth were predominately the element earth – and objects that were mainly earth fell to their natural place. (Rarity in this context means the inverse of density, not scarcity.)

4 When I was a child (perhaps in part because I think I started Sunday School before I could start 'proper' school), I used to muse about God being able to create everything, and being omniscient – although I am pretty sure I did not use that term! It seemed to me (and, sensibly, I do not think I shared this at Sunday School) that if God knew everything and was infallible, then he did not need to actually create the world as a physical universe, but rather just think what would happen. For God, that would work just as well, as a perfect mind could imagine things exactly as they would be in exquisite detail and with absolute precision. So, I thought I might just be an aspect of the mind of God – so part of a simulation in effect. This was a comforting rather than worrying thought – surely there is no safer place to be than in the mind of God?

Sadly, I grew to be much less sure of God (the creation seems just as incredible – in the literal sense – either way), but still think that, for God, thinking it would be as good as (if not the same as) making it. I suspect some theologians would not entirely dismiss this.

If I am just a character in someone's simulation, I'd rather it was that of a supreme being than some alien adolescent likely to abandon my world at the first sign of romantic interest from a passing conspecific.

5 Unless we assume a dystopian Matrix like simulation, the technology has to be able to create characters (sub-routines?) with self-awareness – which goes some way beyond just a convincing simulation, as it also requires components complex enough to be convinced about their own existence, as well as the reality of the wider simulation!

Balding black holes – a shaggy dog story

Resurrecting an analogy from a dead metaphor?

Keith S. Taber

Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky…(Image by Garik Barseghyan from Pixabay)

I was intrigued by an analogy in a tweet

Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed their "hair."

The link led me to an item at a webpage at 'Science News' entitled 'Black holes born with magnetic fields quickly shed them' written by Emily Conover. This, in turn, referred to an article in Physical Review Letters.

Now Physical Review Letters is a high status, peer-reviewed, journal.

(Read about peer review)

As part of the primary scientific literature, it publishes articles written by specialist scientists in a technical language intended to be understood by other specialists. Dense scientific terminology is not used to deliberately exclude general readers (as sometimes suggested), but is necessary for scientists to make a convincing case for new knowledge claims that seem persuasive to other specialists. This requires being precise, using unambiguous technical language."The thingamajig kind of, er, attaches to the erm, floppy bit, sort of" would not do the job.

(Read about research writing)

Science News however is news media – it publishes journalism (indeed, 'since 1921' the site reports – although that's the publication and not its website of course.) While science journalism is not essential to the internal processes of science (which rely on researchers engaging with each other's work though  scholarly critique and dialogue) it is very important for the public's engagement with science, and for the accountability of researchers to the wider community.

Science journalists have a job similar to science teachers – to communicate abstract ideas in a way that makes sense to their audience. So, they need to interpret research and explain it in ways that non-specialists can understand.

The news article told me

"Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed…
Unlike dogs with their varied fur coats, isolated black holes are mostly identical. They are characterized by only their mass, spin and electric charge. According to a rule known as the no-hair theorem, any other distinguishing characteristics, or "hair," are quickly cast off. That includes magnetic fields."

Conover, 2013

Here there is clearly the use of an analogy – as a black hole is not the kind of thing that has actual hair. This would seem to be an example of a journalist creating an analogy (just as a science teacher would) to help 'make the unfamiliar familiar' to her readers:

just as

dogs with lots of hair need to shed some ready for the warmer weather (a reference to a familiar everyday situation)

so, too, do

black holes (no so familiar to most people) need to lose their hair…

(Read about making the unfamiliar familiar)

But hair?

Surely a better analogy would be along the lines that just as dogs with lots of hair need to shed some ready for the warmer weather, so to do black holes need to lose their magnetic fields…

An analogy is used to show a novel conceptual structure (here, relating to magnetic fields around black holes) maps onto a more familiar, or more readily appreciated, one (here, that a shaggy dog will shed some of its fur). A teaching analogy may not reflect a deep parallel between two systems, as its function may be just to introduce an abstract principle.

(Read about science analogies)

Why talk of black holes having 'hair'?

Conover did not invent the 'hair' reference for her ScienceNews piece – rather she built her analogy on  a term used by the scientists themselves. Indeed, the title of the cited research journal article was "Magnetic Hair and Reconnection in Black Hole Magnetospheres", and it was a study exploring the consequences of the "no-hair theorem" – as the authors explained in their abstract:

"The no-hair theorem of general relativity states that isolated black holes are characterized [completely described] by three parameters: mass, spin, and charge."

Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021

However, some black holes "are born with magnetic fields" or may "acquire magnetic flux later in life", in which case the fields will vary between black holes (giving an additional parameter for distinguishing them). The theory suggests that these black holes should somehow lose any such field: that is, "The fate of the magnetic flux (hair) on the event horizon should be in accordance with the no-hair theorem of general relativity" (Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021: 1). There would have to be a mechanism by which this occurs (as energy will be conserved, even when dealing with black holes).

So, the study was designed to explore whether such black holes would indeed lose their 'hair'.  Despite the use of this accessible comparison (magnetic flux as 'hair'), the text of the paper is pretty heavy going for someone not familiar with that area of science:

"stationary, asymptotically flat BH spacetimes…multipole component l of a magnetic field…self-regulated plasma…electron-positron discharges…nonzero stress-energy tensor…instability…plasmoids…reconnection layer…relativistic velocities…highly magnetized collisionless plasma…Lundquist number regime…Kerr-schild coordinates…dimensionless BH spin…ergosphere volume…spatial hypersurfaces…[…and so it continues]"

(Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021: 1).

"Come on Harry, you know full well that 'the characteristic minimum plasma density required to support the rotating magnetosphere is the Goldreich-Julian number density' [Bransgrove, Ripperda & Philippov, 2021: 2], so hand me that hyperspanner."
Image from Star Trek: Voyager (Paramount Pictures)

Spoiler alert

I do not think I will spoil anything by revealing that Bransgrove and colleague conclude from their work that "the no-hair theorem holds": that there is a 'balding process' – the magnetic field decays ("all components of the stress-energy tensor decay exponentially in time"). If any one reading this is wondering how they did this work, given that  most laboratory stores do not keep black holes in stock to issue to researchers on request, it is worth noting the study was based on a computer simulation.

That may seem to be rather underwhelming as the researchers are just reporting what happens in a computer model, but a lot of cutting-edge science is done that way. Moreover, their simulations produced predictions of how the collapsing magnetic fields of real black holes might actually be detected in terms of the kinds of radiation that should be produced.

As the news item explained matters:

Magnetic reconnection in balding black holes could spew X-rays that astronomers could detect. So scientists may one day glimpse a black hole losing its hair.

Conover, 2013

So, we have hairy black holes that go through a balding process when they lose their hair – which can be tested in principle because they will be spewing radiation.

Balding is to hair, as…

Here we have an example of an analogy for a scientific concept. Analogies compare one phenomenon or concept to another which is considered to have some structural similarity (as in the figure above). When used in teaching and science communication such analogies offer one way to make the unfamiliar familiar, by showing how the unfamiliar system maps in some sense onto a more familiar one.

hair = magnetic field

balding = shedding the magnetic field

Black holes are expected to be, or at least to become, 'hairless' – so without having magnetic fields detectable from outside the event horizon (the 'surface' connecting points beyond which everything, even light, is unable to 'escape' the gravitational field and leave the black hole). If black holes are formed with, or acquire, such magnetic fields, then there is expected to be a 'balding' process. This study explored how this might work in certain types of (simulated) black holes – as magnetic field lines (that initially cross the event horizon) break apart and reconnect. (Note that in this description the magnetic field lines – imaginary lines invented by Michael Faraday as a mental tool to think about and visualise magnetic fields – are treated as though they are real objects!)

Some such comparisons are deliberately intended to help scientists explain their ideas to the public – but scientists also use such tactics to communicate to each other (sometimes in frivolous or humorous ways) and in these cases such expressions may do useful work as short-hand expressions.

So, in this context hair denotes anything that can be detected and measured from outside a black hole apart form its mass, spin, and charge (see, it is much easier to say 'hair')- such as magnetic flux density if there is a magnetic field emerging from the black hole.

A dead metaphor?

In the research paper, Bransgrove, Ripperda and Philippov do not use the 'hair' comparison as an analogy to explain ideas about black holes. Rather they take the already well-established no-hair theorem as given background to their study ("The original no-hair conjecture states that…"), and simply explain their work in relation to it  ("The fate of the magnetic flux (hair) on the event horizon should be in accordance with the no-hair theorem of general relativity.")

Whereas an analogy uses an explicit comparison (this is like that because…), a comparison that is not explained is best seen as a metaphor. A metaphor has 'hidden meaning'. Unlike in an analogy, the meaning is only implied.

  • "The no-hair theorem of general relativity states that isolated black holes are characterized by three parameters: mass, spin, and charge";
  • "The original no-hair conjecture states that all stationary, asymptotically flat BH [black hole] spacetimes should be completely described by the mass, angular momentum, and electric charge"

(Read adbout science metaphors)

Bransgrove and colleagues do not need to explain why they use the term 'hair' in their research report as in their community it has become an accepted expression where researchers already know what it is intended to mean. We might consider it a dead metaphor, an expression which was originally used to imply meaning through some kind of comparison, but which through habitual use has taken on literal meaning.

Science has lots of these dead metaphors – terms like electrical charge and electron spin have with repeated use over time earned their meanings without now needing recourse to their origins as metaphors. This can cause confusion as, for example, a learner may  develop alternative conceptions about electron spin if they do not appreciate its origin as a metaphor, and assumes an electron spins in the same sense as as spinning top or the earth in space. Then there is an associative learning impediment as the learner assumes an electron is spinning on its axis because of the learner's (perfectly reasonable) associations for the word 'spin'.

The journalist or 'science writer' (such as Emily Conover), however, is writing for a non-specialist readership, so does need to explain the 'hair' reference.  So, I would characterise the same use of the terms hair/no-hair and balding as comprising a science analogy in the news item, but a dead metaphor in the context of the research paper. The meaning of language, after all, is in the mind of the reader.

Work cited:

So if someone was stood here, we'd be a solid

Keith S. Taber

Morag was a participant in the Understanding Science Project. During her first term in secondary school, Morag told me she had studies changes of state, which was about "melting things, it's like solid, liquid and gas. Where like an ice cube melts to go to water, it evaporates to go to gas, it then condenses to go to water and then freezes to go to ice".

When I asked her about about the states of matter, Morag gave me a quite polished response. In the middle of this, she stood up and started moving about. It appeared that she had modelled the states of matter in class through a simulation, with the students acting as particles – and this association seemed to now be cued by her recalling the explanations for the different states of matter:

I: So silly question, 'cause I'm sure everybody knows really, but what's a solid, what's a liquid and what's a gas then?

Morag: A solid is an object where the particles are very close together, but still have room to move very slightly, you know like they can only move little bits, er, it has a fixed shape, it cannot be poured – and that's all I can remember.

I: That's quite a bit. And that's different to a liquid, is it?

M: Yeah, 'cause a liquid you can pour, it takes the shape of its container, the particles are spread out more evenly, but still in a, but are still spread in a – yeah they're spread evenly it can be poured, (it takes the shape of its container), the particles are still quite close, but they are further away than they were in a solid, so they can move just a bit more. If you know what I mean, like. So if someone was stood here [indicating next to her], we'd be a solid, 'cause we just move very slightly,

I: all right, yeah

M: and if we were a liquid we would be stood just a bit further away, so we can move a bit more.

I: I see, so if you had brought a friend with you,

M: Yeah, and if we were stood like that, if she was stood there, we'd be a solid, 'cause we were quite close, but we still had room to move about

I: Mm

M: if we were a liquid, we'd be a bit further, but we still, still quite close, but still had move to room, to move about, and I'm not going to tell you about gas until we get onto gas.

I: Okay. So you and your friend could be a liquid? Which means that I could pour you and you would take up the shape of your container?

M: No, I mean like we'd be the particles in liquid.

I: Ah, I see.

M: you know like

I: Moves around!

M: like, so like, like, so we'd be like that, and there would be lots of us, but we could still move about. Yeah? And if we were a liquid we would be like that, and we could still move about. And if we were a gas we'd be further apart, but and then we can, and then we can move around the room freely.