Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Processes

Common sense reasoning about the physical world must include an understanding of physical processes and the changes they cause. For example, heating a liquid causes its temperature to rise and if continued long enough may cause it to boil. A style of analysis is presented that combines deKleer's Incremental Qualitative analysis wjth the Quantity Space idea from Naive Physics to reason about the effects of physical processes and their limits. The analysis is demonstrated on an example with practical importance, and further possibilities for applications are discussed.