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How does Google suggests for "rheology"?

Study showed recently that Google search suggestions may be misleading. The study took the word “nanotechnology” for example and showed that Google frequently directs searcher of this word to topic of health impact of nanotechnology. News reporters said this means that Google may scramble our perception of science reality.

Although I don’t buy the logic that not knowing any topic about the health impact of nanotechnology at all is helpful for a positive public image of nanotechnology, I am still interested what Google suggests for “rheology”. There is a relatively new tool in Google search — the wonder wheel. When searching for “rheology”, you can start a wonder wheel of it and explore the second-order wheel of each suggestion to “rheology”.

wonder wheel.jpg

To my surprise, “thixotropic” seems much more suggestible than “viscoelastic”. Does this mean people want to know about the former more frequently than the latter? Also more suggestible than “viscoelastic” is the simpler concept “viscosity”. “Viscoelastic” is even not in the suggestion list.

“Viscoelastic” does appears in wider list of suggestion, though.

related searches.jpg

Viscoelasticity is a fundamental concept in rheology. The study of this property started from the very beginning of the history of rheology until today. However, many that are new to rheology find it much harder to accept than the concept of viscosity or even thixotropy.

The concept of viscosity is simple. The famous Newtonian definition appears exclusively in every textbooks. And starting from this, it is quite easy to understand what is non-Newtonian. Indeed, the Newtoinan/non-Newtonian type of classification is very convenient for fluids — things that can flow, but most rheological problems is concerned by things with fluidity that depends. The abyss most students of rheology really struggling against is things that cannot be properly characterized by only viscosity but need to intorduce the measures of G‘ and G”. I have been asked too many times about the “real, real meaning” of these moduli. Even experienced materials science researchers may not understand why bother uses this complicated framework of measure to characterize a piece material.

No bother indeed, in the practical context. There are two rheometers in my research group. Colleagues from other collages or institutes often find me for rheometry. 90% of the cases are requests for simple viscosity vs shear rate curves. Only when a requester wants to “add more plots and depth” to his/her paper would he/she asked for dynamic, that is, G‘/_G_” tests. In industry, a viscosity curve gives enough information for production in most cases.

The also popular “thixotropy” should thank the industry, too. Thixotropy is hard to characterize in a scientific way (ready for structural modeling) till even today, but materials of this property are essential for the existence of the paint industry, where an ad hoc thixotropic loop test is enough in most cases. More interestingly, while the concept of viscosity cannot meet the cases where the fluidity of materials is dependent, the concept of thixotropy is just about the duality of “flow/don’t flow”, somewhat complementing the former. In the practical sense, it seems that simple extreme concept like flow and not-flow (i.e. Newtonian vs Hookian) is enough in dealing rheological problems. That’s why Google does not suggest “viscoelastic” when searched for “rheology”. This may be misleading, however, when the user wants to know about rheology academically.

What I thought about Google's move

原文在此

Google moved

Since earlier today, Google has been redirecting its China based search engine to Hong Kong. This is a reasonable move in face of China’s continuous Internet censorship. Born in the 1980s I still have at least 50 years (according to the male average age data of China) to watch where China will go, but currently I feel confused and worry because now it is a critical period for China to positively answer to this question.

I am reluctant to accept the view that the Chinese government as well as all the Chinese people are genetically unwise and doom to stupidity, or that they believe in tyranny like the North Korean seem to be. In my opinion, what China is facing is somewhat worse than the Muslin world — lack of its own idealism in face of the dominating western value. Although China seems happy to follow many western wisdom in economical and social management but it does not lose its cultural root however successful the Internet censorship is. I myself have observed everyday the Chinese netizens criticizing the government not based on western values (which should be more effective) but old Chinese values (which leads to irony). They are immune to loyalty to God, law, or anything that keep every westerners happy with their lives. They feel uncomfortable to live like the westerns, as what you may often see in various Chinese town or Chinese neighborhood in the western world. Unlike the fact of the US and what’s claimed by the Chinese government, there is only one major race in China — the Chinese people.

The administrative problems we suffer everyday in our country effectively tune down most of our uncertainty of value, which will not otherwise disappear if we would remove the current ruling power. An honest survey among all the Chinese about their believes will not yield one obvious result but an even distribution covering very conflicting ends. The value we once affirmatively believe in has been removed, for more than one time, since the end of Qing Dynasty. Democracy based on free market economy advocated by Sun Yat-sen finally led to malicious capitalism and warlords. The temporary stable Chiang Kai-shek government lost the Chinese people not because the attack of Communists but its own corruption. The success of Mao Zhedong was not his talent but his deep understanding of the ultimate pursuit of all Chinese people, petty farmers. He, however, also failed in believing too much in this understanding and reluctant to change the petty-farmer consciousness in the modernization process. The Cultural Revolution was his final trial to design a new culture to meet the future development of China, which have proved wrong. The wisdom of Deng Xiaoping in his period of Chinese history is put all the idealistic controversy away and focused on economic renaissance by all means, including western means, until June 1989. The disproportionation of the 1989 Movement for Democracy told him that China was not and will never prepared for fundamentalistic liberalism. Strengthened censorship and huge economical achievement guarded and guided China to the 21st century, to a critical point when we can not continue putting away the problem of idealism.

We have reached this point since Microsoft tighten up the genuine software licensing technology. But it also lack the courage of Google to stop the Chinese people from profiting from the western way of production and industry while keeping their own customs and culture. Although Hu Jintao and his government have promised to “deepen the reform of political institution and extend the coverage of democracy”, in a world of globalization today, the situation cannot be more urgent and worrying.

另，Google违反的是这条法律：