(PhysOrg.com) -- Sometimes the simplest things hold the key to understanding complex effects. It turns out that a humble metal pull-chain -- just like those used on ceiling fans -- can be a pretty good model for complex properties ...
Polymers
Apr 8, 2010
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(Phys.org)—High-speed video of projectiles slamming into a bed of disks has given scientists a new microscopic picture of the way a meteorite or missile transfers the energy of its impact to sand and dirt grains.
General Physics
Dec 11, 2012
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Dipping a tube into a container filled with water will make the water rise in the tube. This phenomenon is called liquid capillarity. It is responsible for many natural and technical processes, for example the water absorption ...
Condensed Matter
May 24, 2017
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For those of you who take sandcastle building very seriously, listen up: MIT engineers now say you can trust a very simple equation to calculate the force required to push a shovel—and any other "intruder"— through sand. ...
Condensed Matter
Aug 29, 2016
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A pile of sand, gravel, or other granular material takes on a familiar conical shape, with the slope of the pile's walls coming to rest at the static angle of repose. If the material exceeds this angle, it will trigger an ...
Space Exploration
Dec 22, 2011
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Researchers in condensed matter physics at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago have created an experimental and computer model to study how jamming, the physical process in which collections of particles ...
Condensed Matter
May 13, 2009
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Pour sand from a bucket and it flows like a liquid, but stand on it and it supports weight like a solid. This unusual behavior is a property of granular materials, and it is one of the reasons Heinrich Jaeger, the William ...
Condensed Matter
Feb 14, 2014
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There is an important difference between knowing something and being able to prove something. Even in science, there are ideas that everyone shares, but which no one can prove. The link between disorder and metastability ...
Condensed Matter
May 19, 2016
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Duke graduate student Yuchen Zhao has spent the last year studying such "sandcastles of stars"—towers crafted from hundreds of six-armed stars or "hexapods" which bear a remarkable resemblance to the jacks you might have ...
General Physics
May 11, 2016
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In some ways, granular material—such as a pile of sand—can behave much like a crystal, with its close-packed grains mimicking the precise, orderly arrangement of crystalline atoms. Now researchers at MIT have pushed that ...
General Physics
Aug 5, 2013
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