With a set of scales,
the balancing is static: you put a fixed amount of one side, and an amount of
the other to determine the weight. When the scales are even, everything is
balanced. Well, with a dynamic balance, things seem on the surface to be in
that same steady, balanced equilibrium, but in actual fact they’re not.
As an example,
consider sand on a beach. You may go to a beach and it looks to be the same,
day after day after day, but often the sand is being continually washed away at
one end of the beach, washed in at the other, and moved along (albeit slowly) from one end to the
other. In that case, the sand on the beach is a state of dynamic balance: what
is coming in balances what is going out.
As another example,
consider a lake. It receives water from rain, runoff, and perhaps melt-water
from a glacier, and loses water to evaporation, seepage and any rivers it
feeds. Again, the situation may appear to be the same, but it relies on the
inputs and outputs to balance.
Change the inputs or
outputs, and you will change the situation. In the case of the lake, reduce
rainfall and the water level will fall; in the case of the beach, do something
like build a stone jetty, and you will cut off the flow of sand along the
beach.
Another example of
dynamic balance is our diet with regard to calories. We take in calories from
food and drink (only water has no
calories), and expend calories to keep our body functioning (breathing, heart pumping, digestion and a
whole range of chemical processes) and with whatever physical activity we
do. If they’re in balance, our weight stays the same. If something happens, for
instance we wind up ill (e.g. arthritis)
and thus unable to exercise, our expenditure of calories decreases, and thus
our weight may go up – unless we make a change to our input.
As of the time this
definition was written, I’ve touched on this topic in the following posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.