The elusive gluon

Elusive Knowledge" Elusive Knowledge'

We know a lot. I know what food penguins eat. I know that phones used to ring, but nowadays squeal, when someone calls up. I know that Essendon won the 1993 Grand Final. I know that here is a hand, and here is another. We have all sorts of everyday knowledge, and we have it in abundance. To doubt that would be absurd. At any rate, to doubt it in any serious and lasting way would be absurd; and ...

The elusive mantle plume

Mantle plumes are hypothetical hot, narrow mantle upwellings that are often invoked to explain hotspot volcanism with unusual geophysical and geochemical characteristics. The mantle plume is a well-established geological structure in computer modeling and laboratory experiments but an undisputed seismic detection of one has yet to be made. Vertically continuous low shear velocity anomalies in t...

The elusive flippases

What do they do? In water, phospholipids like phosphatidylcholine spontaneously form closed bilayers with the polar head group exposed to water and the hydrocarbon chains forming the hydrophobic membrane interior. Although phospholipids display a fast lateral diffusion, their ‘flip-flop’ movement between the two membrane halves is very slow, with half times up to several days. Yet phospholipids...

The Elusive Water Vibrio

The elusive chemical potential

This paper offers some qualitative understanding of the chemical potential, a topic that students invariably find difficult. Three ‘‘meanings’’ for the chemical potential are stated and then supported by analytical development. Two substantial applications—depression of the melting point and batteries—illustrate the chemical potential in action. The origin of the term ‘‘chemical potential’’ has...