Page:Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics (1902).djvu/170

146 apply the processes of taking a limit. If treating the elements of volume as constant, we continue the stirring indefinitely, we get a uniform density, a result not affected by making the elements as small as we choose; but if treating the amount of stirring as finite, we diminish indefinitely the elements of volume, we get exactly the same distribution in density as before the stirring, a result which is not affected by continuing the stirring as long as we choose. The question is largely one of language and definition. One may perhaps be allowed to say that a finite amount of stirring will not affect the mean square of the density of the coloring matter, but an infinite amount of stirring may be regarded as producing a condition in which the mean square of the density has its minimum value, and the density is uniform. We may certainly say that a sensibly uniform density of the colored component may be produced by stirring. Whether the time required for this result would be long or short depends upon the nature of the motion given to the liquid, and the fineness of our method of evaluating the density.

All this may appear more distinctly if we consider a special case of liquid motion. Let us imagine a cylindrical mass of liquid of which one sector of 90° is black and the rest white. Let it have a motion of rotation about the axis of the cylinder in which the angular velocity is a function of the distance from the axis. In the course of time the black and the white parts would become drawn out into thin ribbons, which would be wound spirally about the axis. The thickness of these ribbons would diminish without limit, and the liquid would therefore tend toward a state of perfect mixture of the black and white portions. That is, in any given element of space, the proportion of the black and white would approach 1:3 as a limit. Yet after any finite time, the total volume would be divided into two parts, one of which would consist of the white liquid exclusively, and the other of the black exclusively. If the coloring matter, instead of being distributed initially with a uniform density throughout a section of the cylinder, were distributed with a density represented by any arbitrary