Bil je moski, vzemite ga za vse: Stefan Flow in Supercritical Water.
Bil je moški, vzemite ga za vse. Ne bom več gledal nanj podobnega.
I came across this paper yesterday: Direct Numerical Simulation of Fluid Flow and Heat Transfer of a Reactive Particle Layer with Stefan Flow in Supercritical Water Yingdong Wang, Huibo Wang, and Hui Jin Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2023 62 (3), 1636-1645.
As the properties of supercritical water always catches my eye, I realized that I had no idea what "Stefan flow" is. (It turns out it's something I probably should have known, but didn't.) It is a flow in which a solid material is taken up in a fluid in motion by an action at the fluid/solid interface. Although the word is not exactly equivalent, abrasion touches somewhat on the topic.
Introductory courses in Quantum Mechanics generally introduce early on the Stefan-Boltzmann law which describes the power of emitted radiation by a "black body" at a given temperature, which is proportional to the 4th power of the absolute temperature.
Recalling this from my youth, it occurred to me that I never actually knew anything about who Stefan might be, Boltzmann yes, Stefan no.
Ludwig Boltzmann, who committed suicide in 1906, is one of the most important scientists ever to have lived in my view. He developed the formal understanding of entropy, and in many ways was the founder of statistical mechanics. A consideration of entropy is the key to understanding of energy technology, and energy technology is the most important issue, at least in my view, before humanity today. Nothing else will matter much if we do not address this issue and address it fast. (It's not looking good folks, but we must do what we can.)
It turns out that Boltzmann studied, for the equivalent of a Ph.D. under Joseph Stefan, building on Stefan's work in Thermodynamics.
Who was Stefan?
Interesting guy. A poet, a mathematician, and a physicist in the old Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
His native language was Slovene.
Thus the quotation from Shakespeare translated into Slovene: "He was a man, all in all. I shall not see his like again."
I certainly didn't know that one of the greatest scientists ever to have lived was trained by a Slovenian.
This is a trivial post, but it struck me somehow as something worth saying, that every culture enriches us, whether we know it or not.
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