Suppose I have a uniform, well annealed metal cylinder with a scratch on its surface. Can I predict geometry of how it will buckle under compression if I know the exact geometry of the scratch and there are no other scratches? Cc:
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Not really. A collapse like that is a chaotic process, so details matter and models tend to ignore them. I.e. Earth is a spherical planet in a vacuum. You can precisely calculate how lobbing an asteroid at it would change its orbit. But try it and your rock gets nuked. Same here.
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But clearly the chaotic process will go from being sensitive to initial conditions to insensitive as scratch size goes. A deep enough scratch should nearly deterministically buckle on that side. Like in picture.
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And that's the kind of thinking that preceeded a tree falling onto a house.
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Optimism tends to be a lethal diesease around here. Google avos'.
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