Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Domain Theory of Bird's Orientation ? #Fun

Does a bird have any preferred direction or orientation while lining up on the wire?

Well, look up the wire, in the morning or evening time when they are lined up for social gathering. They remind me of the domain theory of magnetism. Or rather the spin-spin coupling of the Ising model. The Ising model consists of discrete variables that represent magnetic dipole moments of atomic spins that can be in one of two states (+1 or −1). The spins are arranged in a lattice, allowing each spin to interact with its neighbors. Similarly, the interaction between these birds can not be more than one bird distance away on both sides! Since most of them tend to be aligned, the awkward amount of energy that they need to stay in reverse direction should be too high.


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Here is a video showing the flight of the birds sitting on the tree branches. Clearly, their domain is separated from the ones sitting on the wire.