Simple, simpler, simplest: Spontaneous pattern formation in a commonplace system

2012 
In 1855, Lord Kelvin’s brother, James Thomson, wrote a paper describing “certain curious motions” on liquid surfaces. In the present paper, we describe several curious motions produced in the simplest possible manner: by introducing a droplet of food coloring into a shallow dish of water. These motions include the spontaneous formation of labyrinthine stripes, the periodic pulsation leading to chaotic stretching and folding, and the formation of migrating slugs of coloring. We use this simple experiment to demonstrate that the formation of ordered macroscopic patterns is consistent with the requirement of the second law of Thermodynamics that microscopic disorder must increase. This system is suitable for undergraduate experimentation and can be modeled by advanced students in a straightforward finite difference simulation that reproduces the labyrinths and other patterns.
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