• Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    developing or occurring without apparent external influence, force, cause, or treatment

    Pretty much the definition of spontaneous if you ask me.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      In addition to what MotoAsh said, it also has a definite external influence and a well defined force acting upon it. It boiled because it underwent a change in pressure.

      • feannag@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Without apparent external influence. Relative pressure is something humans have a hard time judging. As well as it just exists everyone in that zone vice something easy to perceive, like a fire under a pot boiling water.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Idk man, my ears are pretty good at estimating quick relative pressure changes.

          Also, were I in a spavesuit, I’d probably have trouble judging temperature changed as well.

      • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        This post isn’t showcasing mansplaining. It’s showcasing pedantry.

        Just like this comment!

      • Donkter@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Spontaneous doesn’t mean “happens suddenly without explanation” what are you on about?

      • porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Wrong, wrong, wrong.

        Eh, it definitely has a cause. A known one.

        Nothing to do with the physical definition of spontaneity. Spontaneity of a process just means that the ∆G is negative or total energy of the system is lower after the process, and additional energy isn’t required for the process to be thermodynamically allowed. This is, and I can’t stress this enough, the simplest of simple thermo.

        for the sole reason which specific molecules is nigh impossible to predict

        Also unrelated, but it is fully impossible to predict, since in trying to predict it well enough you reach quantum scales where everything is probabilistic. That doesn’t at all mean everything is spontaneous.

        So, who is correct depends entirely on the mental framing of what someone thinks of when they read “water”.

        Nope, the first person is strictly correct and the second is strictly incorrect, as described above.

        Water as an abstract idea of a specific type of fluid? Not spontaneous.

        Nope, exactly spontaneous. You could even forget about water entirely and model this just as a bunch of nuclei and electrons in a box and derive that the lowest energy state has them being in a gas of atoms, and the initial state doesn’t, which is enough to demonstrate by our earlier statements that boiling is spontaneous.

        Water as in what will literally happen to the bottle of water in the picture?

        This is “not even wrong” territory.

        This post isn’t showcasing mansplaining.

        It absolutely is. We will define mansplaining here as the confidently incorrect dismissal of statements of women by men where we suspect that the genders of the participants may play a role.

        The first part has been demonstrated above. It is also reasonable to assume the second given that we observe this happening to women at a far greater frequency than to men. Although, like with atoms, we cannot prove that this individual instance is a direct result, it is consistent with the probabilistic data and we would need additional evidence to conclude that this particular guy just goes around wrongly correcting everyone equally.

        Nearly valid pedantry at that.

        Once again, not remotely.

      • Oxysis/Oxy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        9 months ago

        While you are technically correct, you also misunderstand who the target audience is and what language is required to actually make people understand.

        When speaking to a normal person you don’t want to slap random jargon and care too much about precise definitions. So in that context spontaneous is a great word to describe what is happening. People without deep backgrounds in the field will not understand technical jargon and it will only make them not pay attention.