Waves

Abstract Amongst the sprawling modern myth of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is a fleeting reference to a man who tried to make patterned paint. The reference is clearly meant to document a quixotic, absurd ambition, for we all know that paint does not unmix into the separate pigments that went into its making. But life is always stranger than we think. Take a look at Plate 4. Pynchon's ill-fated entrepreneur would have done well to follow the recipe that produced these blue and yellow stripes; for this is indeed a stable pattern that emerges spontaneously from a mixture of chemical compounds. This brew of chemicals is just one of many that have been found to generate spatial patterns. Some of these, like that in Plate 4, are stationary; others are dynamic, releasing waves of colour to a pulse as regular as a clock's tick.