As permafrost thaws on Arctic hillsides and shorelines, the land often deforms in a unique fashion, known as a slump. Formally known as mega retrogressive thaw slumps, these areas superficially Keep reading
Tag: granular material
Predicting Landslide Speeds
Knowing what speed a landslide will reach helps us predict how much damage they can cause. That speed depends on many factors: the steepness of the terrain, the sliding distance, Keep reading
“There is a crack in everything…”
When millimeter-sized drops of water infused with nanoparticles dry, they leave behind complex and beautiful residues. As water continues evaporating, the residues warp, bend, and crack. In this video, researchers Keep reading
Drops of Fiber Suspensions
To 3D print with fiber-infused liquids, we need to understand how these drops form, break-up, and splash. That’s the subject of this research poster, which shows drops of a fiber Keep reading
Liquid Metal Printing
Engineers have developed a new 3D-printing technique that uses molten aluminum to quickly manufacture large-scale parts. This Liquid Metal Printing method deposits the metal into a bed of tiny glass Keep reading
Water Reduces Coffee’s Charge
Grinding coffee beans builds up electrical charge as the beans fracture into smaller and smaller pieces. The polarity of the charge depends on the bean’s moisture content; lighter roasts tend Keep reading
“Coat or Collapse?”
Imagine a layer of particles sitting at the interface between oil and water. Known as a granular raft, these particles can interact in interesting ways with other objects. Here, researchers Keep reading
Frictional Fingers
Air pushes into a thin gap filled with water and granular particles in the labyrinth-like image above. The encroaching air pushes grains like a bulldozer’s blade, building up a compacted Keep reading
Granular Gaps
Push air into a gap filled with a viscous fluid, and you’ll get the branching, dendritic pattern of a Saffman-Taylor instability. Here, researchers use a similar set-up: injection into a Keep reading
“Emerald Roots”
As charged particles from the solar wind bombard the upper atmosphere, a glowing plasma forms and dances in the sky. The green light of the plasma reflects off moistened sand, Keep reading