Talk:Instability

This  level-5 vital article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects:

‹See TfM› Physics High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. Technology C‑class This article is within the scope of WikiProject Technology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of technology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.TechnologyWikipedia:WikiProject TechnologyTemplate:WikiProject TechnologyTechnology articles C This article has been given a rating which conflicts with the project-independent quality rating in the banner shell. Please resolve this conflict if possible. Systems High‑importance This article is within the scope of WikiProject Systems, which collaborates on articles related to systems and systems science.SystemsWikipedia:WikiProject SystemsTemplate:WikiProject SystemsSystems articles High This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale. This article is within the field of Control theory.

I am not sure that this article meets the fundamental requirement of informing the uninformed. Lists of instability names might be useful for teaching a parrot a semblance of erudition, but taken out of their original contexts, add little to explaining the idea of instability. Rather than jumping straight into eigenvalues, which immediately gives the impression of Emperor's New Clothes, we should start with static stability, which could be extended to catastrophe theory. Dynamic instability may be explained with diagrams of divergent oscillations, followed by eigenvalues, followed perhaps by chaos. Gordon Vigurs 10:08, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I added most of the listed instabilities on the grounds that someone searching for one of them, will at least find a short desciption on what an instability is. Ideally it would be nice to be able to describe each one and differentiate them. At the very least, it confirms that a specific instabaility is indeed an instability. It's by no means ideal, but a start. --Iantresman 10:37, 9 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Unstable needs a disambiguity page, since there is an Adema album with that name that has an article in this wiki. The user can't reach that page through Unstable, only through Unstable_(album). Which is pretty bad for someone who is not familiar with how articles are named here. 201.24.121.163 (talk) 19:16, 28 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]