Liquid in Motion: Newsletter Challenge (March 2016)

Add a little Marvel Mystery Oil to it and it would make a great penetrating oil. Cryogenically treats your nuts while you loosen them.

Sounds painful!!

If you don't like that sort of thing

Only when they thaw!

It is stated:

"...no outside force or energy has entered the cylinder since you began observing..."

So, no light can enter (or leave) the cylinder. No, wait, we're also told "...notice a motionless clear cylinder..."

And just how cold is it this room anyway?

Magnetic stirrer

You stated that nothing ENTERED the cylinder, but if some of the fluid is EXITING the cylinder, then Coriolis effect will cause the liquid to rotate. If you note the direction of rotation, you may infer whether the lab is in the Northern or Southern hemisphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_force
Mark Bingham
Relativity PL

The liquid has magnetic properties and there is a magnetic stirrer built into the table. This is no mystery.

It's actually the room and your brain that is spinning around the axis of the cylinder

Or counterspinning, depending on the hemisphere

Possibly liquid crystal in the presence of a magnetic field.

'Knowing that no outside force or energy has entered the cylinder since you began observing, how is this possible?' This rules out a magnetic stirrer, a magnetic field or electrical source, heat source or any other external influence.

Therefore, if this is indeed factual, the inertia would need to be generated within the liquid and it would be liquids and or chemical reactions, that react, break down and react again within the solution.

I assume there may also be a colour change when the reactions take place.

There is a stirrer powered by a self contained power pack releasing energy within the cylinder. The problem does not state that no energy is being consumed, merely that it energy and force have not entered the cylinder during the observation period.

''....cylinder, (resting on a table), that is filled with a liquid circulating......''

The joys of punctuation, and the lack thereof, allowing ambiguity and interpretation of each person.

I was wondering if anyone else had spotted that....I keep telling you that grammar is important...

Not here, anything goes it seems. And oddly, others assume understandings. How do they manage?

The liquid is a 'ferrofluid' and the cylinder is sitting on a magnetic stirrer.

Ferro fluid and a rotating magnet beneath the table.

Sorry USB i should read the responses before i post.

The liquid is in outer space. The liquid is still while the container and the "room" (space station), and observer spins around it.

...a trick question maybe...? No external force or energy has entered - no magnetic stirrers then.

I guess an internal battery powered spinning device device was put before you started watching.

No clues to what the liquid is, or how fast it is spinning - assuming horizontal - but it could be vertical - a form of cooling by heat transfer with energy leaving the cylinder setting up in internal rise and fall current due to change in density - or a change in pressure due to liquid leaving the cylinder.

But I like the idea of a 'spinning' room where you are turning - and not the cylinder. Or the space lab.

#5, 7, 12 & 13 could be pointing in the right direction.....

a circling catalytic chemical reaction

The liquid in the container is on a spinning planet, which is also orbiting a star

I think superfluidity is the answer. I have a hard time imagining it but it's like superconductivity except molecules instead of electrons. Welcome to the quantum world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_fluid_accelerator

It is indeed liquid helium as Rixter has stated. The cylinder is perfectly insulated and the helium was stirred before "you" got into the room.

Belousov Zhabotunsky reaction. Ferroin changing due to how many molecules are attached to it.

The liquid is a nourishing soup - or just Detroit tapwater - in which a fly is swimming in a clockwise circle. The reaction force sends the soup anticlockwise.

After painting with silver aluminum paint and cleaning the brush in gasoline, later in the afternoon I was fascinated to see the liquid in the can rolling up in the center and down at the sides.

I assume this was evaporation cooling the surface causing a thermal cycle. Not sure how you would see this in clear liquid but I know from personal experience it happens.

Reading this it does not say how the clear cylinder is resting on the table so lets put it sidways so its axis is parallel to the table. Then lets heat up the one side with a flame or some heat source whatever. Maybe also cool the oposite side with ice or a heatsink or fan or what ever. The liquid now rotates in a cirular motion due to hot liquids rising and cold liquids sinking but circulates horizontaly.

problem solved

"Knowing that no outside force or energy has entered the cylinder since you began observing".

"[H]eat up the one side".

Problem NOT solved

As I see it its a trick question. Outside force means no one using a magnetic spinner or such. Energy ok well lets say it was not a noticeable energy such as the sun coming through the window heating it up on the one side. This way no one has noticeable put energy into it.

As I see it nothing can go on moving indefintely, there is always friction even in liquids. The question uses the words "noticable energy". This is the best I can think of.

You got anything?

no outside force or energy has entered the cylinder since you began observing

So what in fact happened to the posting of the answer?

"Knowing that no outside force or energy has entered the cylinder since you began observing" Actually you fell asleep "After hours of observation" and some gave it a good stir .....!

Beer brewing in a clear glass flask swirls for hours under the heat generated by bacterial action...

After hours of observation

Observation needs energy (visible light?) that heat's up the liquid helium so that the liquid will loose its superfluid state.

br

"After hours of observation..."

Your explanation is correct, but the above condition calls into question even the possibility of such an occurrence.

The situation you describe is possible if the room is quite cold, and having not noted anything about room temperature is somewhat analogous to stating that the sun will not rise tomorrow, but not noting that you are referring to the roughly 6 month night at the poles.