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When stream , sand behaves much like water to form water - like droplet , scientist have discovered .
The determination could be important to a wide-cut mountain chain of industries that use " fluidized " juiceless particles for crude refining , charge card manufacturing and the drug diligence , the researchers say .
Low levels of surface tension cause water-like droplet formation in flows of dry granular materials. In essence, the sand flows like water.
Researchers previously opine dry particles lacked sufficientsurface tensionto shape droplets like average liquids . But physicists from the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at the University of Chicago , led by prof Heinrich M. Jaeger , used high-pitched - hurrying picture taking to measure moment levels of surface tension and detect droplet organization in period of dry granular cloth .
A short television show up how the find was made .
The employment , affirm by the National Science Foundation , was detailed last week in the journalNature .
" Previous study of granular streams were able to detect cluster by performing experiment in vacuum and were able to establish that the bunch was not due to the puff from the ambient melody , " Jaeger read . " However , the cause of the clustering remained a mystery . "
In the new experiment , Jaeger and colleagues used a special co - moving apparatus forge for a high - fastness , $ 80,000 tv camera that appropriate images much like a skydiver might photograph a fellow jumper in free fall .
They observed fall 100 - micrometer - diameter glass beads , or cyclosis Baroness Dudevant , and found that forces as much as 100,000 meter smaller than those that producesurface tensionin ordinary liquids could make droplet organisation in grainy current and cause these dry streams to behave like an radical - low - surface - tenseness liquid .
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{ { video=“LS_090624_sand " title=“Sand Falls Like Water " caption=“In high - speed television camera move alongside an accelerating , fall gumption to tag organization of texture cluster , like to the organisation of piddle droplets from a faucet . Credit : John Royer and Heinrich Jaeger , The University of Chicago " } }
John Royer , a graduate student in cathartic at the University of Chicago , recrudesce the setup . Royer and his colleagues also directly measured grain - to - grain interactions with an nuclear force microscope .
" At first we thought grain - caryopsis interactions would be far too weak to regulate the granular flow , " Royer say . " The nuclear force microscopy storm us by demonstrating that small changes in these interactions could have a large impingement on the breakup of the stream , conclusively showing that these fundamental interaction were in reality controlling the droplet geological formation . "
Researchers say understanding how dry materials coalesce could create greater efficiency in their transportation and manipulation . The pharmaceutical production of pills , for example , could benefit by rain buckets equal amounts of a drug into a capsule every time while greatly cut back waste .
" Estimates show that we ravage 60 percent of the mental ability of many of our industrial plant due to problems refer to the transport of these materials , " Jaeger said . " Hence even a little melioration in our understanding of how granular medium behave should have a profound impact for industry . "
