They may be only metastable, for example, hovering for long periods away from equilibrium. They may involve complicated microstructure that can only be interpreted through some coarse graining devices. We find them everywhere, in both material and biological environments. Below are both some older references and some new ones. Most often, I find myself in the company of colleagues who are not mathematicians.
Mathematics can say something about the world.
We are novices at this, so please let me know if the movie doesn't work. The selection depicts anisotropic grain growth and is joint work with Chun Liu, Florin Manolache , Shlomo Ta'asan , and Irene Livshits. Selected Publications 1. The variational formulation of the Fokker-Planck Equation, SIAM J. Math Anal. Extracting the relative grain boundary free energy and mobility functions from the geometry of microstructures, Scripta Materiala, 38.4, 531-536 6.