I hung a painting in my living room using those non paint damaging
adhesive hanger strips that use Velcro to secure the weight of the
painting against the wall.
That was 6 years ago, it has been in place with no external sources
to disturb it other than the air that circulates and entropy.
One day I begin to hear the sound of velcro ripping and the painting
falls off the wall.
Could this be an extremely simple example of symmetry breaking? I
get that its an entropic thing with the decay of the adhesive and
or paint on the wall accumulating in the eventual failure - but
could this also be considered symmetry breaking from a more established perspective?
[[Mod. note --
I don't think this process is an example of symmetry breaking.
The key point is that the hanger strips are applying a net force
(= the combined weight of the painting and the hanger strips) *downwards*
on the wall-fixture, so the up and down directions are NOT symmetric.
Wikipedia has what looks like a nice overview of symmetry breaking:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breaking
-- jt]]
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