leading authority and a professor of the Red Rhode university, “is one
that touches our practical life closely.” And the combed youth of
generation ‘present’ agrees.
What is equilibrium? It is a state of affair in which the existing
proportion of material everywhere in a system, remains the same. For
example, a person sitting for a light tea on the porcelain throne,
emptying his stomach at precisely the rate at which it gets filled can
be said to be in equilibrium.
The egg-chick equilibrium can be simply represented as:
Egg <—-> Chicken
Any youngster worth his grain knows that egg gives rise to chicken. And
chicks give eggs. Which is to say, that in a system isolated from wolves
or class going children, a set of eggs should hatch to give a
corresponding number of chicks. And vice versa.
Dr. Robert Cock illustrated this relationship with his famous third
equation:
[egg] = K(cock) [chicken]
Which gives the Cock’s constant K(c).
K(c) = [egg]/[chicken]
(Ratio of concentration of egg to chick)
Controversy against the cock’s equation arose in the form of a plucky
oologist, Dr. Egg. Dr. Egg quite practically pointed out that while one
egg may give rise to one chick only, a hen gives more than one egg in
it’s lifetime. The statement took the white feather community by a
storm. It led to, among other things, one butchery attempt on Egg, and
thirteen ‘pecking order determination’ bouts.
population increases exponentially, while the chick population can only
compete geometrically.
For the next four years, the white and the red feathers terrorised the
world with frequent research on when exactly the Earth would be overrun
with eggs.
Mrs. Expohen gave her popular Egg-bang theory, which states that the
increase in egg mass ultimately causes a quantum explosion of the
universe. The succeeding universe is re-formed from the previous egg
shells. And the cycle is repeated.
Though it won popular acclaim, the stiff-necked scientific community
blatantly refused to see her point.
The final answer to the dilemma came in the form of the dashing
professor La Henlier.
“Change in any of the factors that determine the equilibrium conditions
of a system will shift the equilibrium in such a manner, so as to reduce
or counteract the effect of the change.”
The La Henlier principle simply meant that if eggs were in excess they
would get eaten. The easy solution caused wonted irritation in the avian
world. Meanwhile, Cock was proved correct.
The contemporary Ovarian Equilibrium theory maintains dynamism. Eggs
and chicks retain proportion not through stasis, but rather through
continuous inter-conversion.
Passed through the second law of thermodynamics, the theory gets a clean
chit. Simply put, the second law, says that processes in isolation or in
a group occur only when the net reaction is spontaneous. Also,
spontaneous reaction leads to a rise in Entropy or
disorderliness.
Egg <—-> Chick
the egg is the less disordered of the two. Hence a reaction from left to
right is thermodynamically favoured. In actual practice, this is the
case too. An egg makes a chick without apparent effort, while a chick
creates a whole lot of disorderliness (chiefly in the form of SQUACK!!’s
and droppings) to create the egg.
Generally speaking, the Cock’s constant, being a constant, does not
change much. However, temperature does have an effect on Equilibrium
constants. The Eggheneius equation,
C=A.e^(-Ea/R.T)
when applied on ovarian equilibrium gives the result- K(c) increases
with increase in temperature.
This can be easily explained by the affinity of human being to warm
places and their despicable habit of eating chicks.
Further research on ovarian equilibrium is in process and results shall
be forthcoming in the ‘Egg Weekly’.
Adios.
