From silicon carbide to the removal of George W Bush by way of Kinlochleven

SiC is a classic case of kinetically limited growth: when a layer material is deposited, the atoms are fixed forever. Thus the observed structures depend on the surface energetics, not those of the bulk This can be modelled with a 1-D Ising model wherein long-range and short range forces compete. The bulk solution of this model is the Devil's Staircase: an equilibrium phase diagram in which various ordered phases are infinitely closely packed as a function of some model parameter. The surface growth model produces all of these phases as a function of depth: producing a tremendous (apparent) complexity which would appear disordered to experiment but is actually zero-entropy. In fact, silicon carbide falls in an uninteresting region of the parameter space, but the model generalises to many applications, including voting strategies in two-party elections. ''Devil's staircase in kinetically limited growth" G. J. Ackland, Phys. Rev. E, cond-mat/0205102