Small particles can float on a liquid, held together as a raft through capillary action. But those rafts — like the tea skin below — break up when waves jostle Keep reading
Tag: fracture
Solid, Liquid, Both?
Materials like oobleck — a suspension of cornstarch particles in water — are tough to classify. In some circumstances, they behave like a fluid, but in others, they act like Keep reading
Breaking Ground
Pushing a fluid into a porous granular material can fracture it into branching, lightning-like patterns. Here, air is injected into wet grains as a laboratory analog to hydrocarbon extraction or Keep reading