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Phys. Rev. E 52, R2168–R2171 (1995)

[Issue 3 – September 1995 ]

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Long-range anticorrelations and non-Gaussian behavior of a leaky faucet

T.J.P. Penna and P.M.C. de Oliveira

Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Av. Litorânea, s/n, 24210-340 Niterói, RJ, Brazil

J.C. Sartorelli, W.M. Gonçalves, and R.D. Pinto

Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 20516, 01452-990 São Paulo, SP, Brazil

We find that intervals between successive drops from a leaky faucet display scale-invariant, long-range anticorrelations characterized by the same exponents of heartbeat-to-heartbeat intervals of healthy subjects. From this analysis leaky faucets should be considered as a system in criticality. This behavior is also confirmed by numerical simulations on a lattice and it is independent of faucet width and flow rate. The histogram for the drop intervals is also well described by a Lévy distribution with the same index for both histograms of healthy and diseased subjects. This additional result corroborates the evidence for similarities between leaky faucets and healthy hearts underlying dynamics.

©1995 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v52/pR2168
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.52.R2168
PACS: 05.40.+j, 87.10.+e

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