Granular materials like sand, gravel, and medications can become a rigid mass when squeezed or sheared. Even with a relatively loose packing, these materials can jam together to act like Keep reading
Tag: force chain
Fun From the Beach
Here’s a neat bit of fluid dynamics derived from a day at the beach! Our experiment begins with well-mixed (and likely compacted) sand grains and sea water in a bottle. Keep reading
The Strangeness of Sand
Sand and other granular materials can flow, jam, and transmit forces in counterintuitive ways. This Lutetium Project video gives a nice overview of some of these bizarre properties. Many of Keep reading
Scaling High-Speed Impacts
The impact of a solid object into a bed of grains is a major topic in many fields from ballistics to astronomy. Researchers study these impacts experimentally using photoelastic disks, Keep reading
Stress Between Grains
Granular materials like sand and beads can shift and flow in fluid-like ways, but they’re much harder to predict. Part of this is due to the way friction between individual Keep reading
Revealing Stress
What goes on inside of a granular material like sand when an object moves through it? Individual grains will shift and may impact one another or simply slide past. Researchers Keep reading