Benford’s law in non-equilibrium processes: Droplet collisions case

Benford’s law is investigated for the simulation results generated from non-equilibrium molecular dynamics. A statistic to measure how closely a set of the numbers follows Benford’s law is defined. The simulation data are from the collisions of two nano droplets with different impact velocities. When a non-equilibrium system returns to its equilibrium state, some physical quantities relevant to the non-equilibrium settings follow Benford’s law more closely. The initial settings for the non-equilibrium state can be interpreted as a data fabrication of its corresponding equilibrium state. A connection with the Shannon entropy for the first digit distribution is also discussed.