Amount of muscle a person who doesn’t exercise regularly has.
Level of clutter on a person’s desk/counter/etc.
Quantity of light that reaches a forest floor at a given time.
(Extra:) Number of organisms in an all-male group.
I recognize 1 and 3 are borderline dynamic equilibria but I think they changes on a slow enough timescale that they count.
Bonus exercise:
Watch their diet over the timescale of weeks to months and their physical activity. Can ignore incidental activity, like running to catch a bus or lifting lots of stuff for a move. More generally, can ignore any activity that’s acute.
Persistent changes to their cleaning behaviors (for reduction) or accumulation patterns (do they switch to computer notetaking?). Can ignore temporary changes or routine cleaning behaviors that have been going on for a while.
Pay attention to introduction of organisms/factors that change the forest to a different type of environment with less (or more) coverage. Can ignore both temporary disturbances like a human walking through and crushing plants and introduction of organisms which only consume one of several types of trees that form the canopy, since others will presumably fill the void.
I particularly like 2 & 3 - they evoke great visualizations in my head. I imagine a fast-forwarded video showing things appearing and disappearing, but density staying at roughly the same level over time.
Main exercise:
Amount of muscle a person who doesn’t exercise regularly has.
Level of clutter on a person’s desk/counter/etc.
Quantity of light that reaches a forest floor at a given time.
(Extra:) Number of organisms in an all-male group.
I recognize 1 and 3 are borderline dynamic equilibria but I think they changes on a slow enough timescale that they count.
Bonus exercise:
Watch their diet over the timescale of weeks to months and their physical activity. Can ignore incidental activity, like running to catch a bus or lifting lots of stuff for a move. More generally, can ignore any activity that’s acute.
Persistent changes to their cleaning behaviors (for reduction) or accumulation patterns (do they switch to computer notetaking?). Can ignore temporary changes or routine cleaning behaviors that have been going on for a while.
Pay attention to introduction of organisms/factors that change the forest to a different type of environment with less (or more) coverage. Can ignore both temporary disturbances like a human walking through and crushing plants and introduction of organisms which only consume one of several types of trees that form the canopy, since others will presumably fill the void.
I particularly like 2 & 3 - they evoke great visualizations in my head. I imagine a fast-forwarded video showing things appearing and disappearing, but density staying at roughly the same level over time.