Roll Over Boltzmann

Elizabeth City, North Carolina, N36 18 W76 13
Imagine a number of vessels confined in a small area. They, like me, are waiting 90 minutes for a bridge to open. The wind is blowing and the tidal current is moving and the river is too deep to anchor, therefore, none of the vessels can stay still. It became interesting when there were three of us dancing about trying to avoid collisions. Now imagine the same scene 60 minutes later when there are more than 25 boats in the same space doing the dance. It seems improbable that so many free moving atoms in a small space could avoid collisions. In fact, Boltzmann invented the statistical laws of how they should behave. Amazingly there were no collisions. The behavior of these boats is the antithesis of a perfect gas, so what should we say? Not imperfect gas. Perhaps they form a superfluid. Perhaps the captains are all Maxwell’s demons. How about a Maxwell craven as opposed to a perfect gas.

We spent the night rafted up with a lot of other boats at the NC visitor’s center. We took off early this morning at 0700. Boy was it cold. The weather down here is very pleasant in the afternoons but at night it gets really cold.

The canal leads to a river and the river leads to Elizabeth City. What a nice place. Free docks, free water, free WI-FI, free shuttles to the grocery. More -- at 1600 there is a free wine and cheese reception for boaters every day. Apparently this place is famous among boaters. I’ll write more about it tomorrow.