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Make A Hole - And Sustain It Indefinitely
Mick Ohrberg writes "Florian Merkt, Robert Deegan, and Erin Rericha, all at the University of Texas, have shown that a hole created in a water and cornstarch mixture with a puff of air can be persistent if the mixture is shaken at about 120Hz with acceleration being in the 12g-25g range. The physics behind the phenomenon has not yet been explained."
I downloaded the removed video when the site was on Fark this week. You can get it off my server here (3.8 meg wmv).
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
scale the whole project up, and easy access to sunken boats?
Unlikely, for this approach, at least. This experiment is relying on special interactions between the cornstarch suspension and the sound waves passing through it. Water behaves a lot more like an ideal liquid than a cornstarch suspension does, so it's not going to exhibit the same effect.
There are other patterns of motion you could induce in water to get access to sunken ships (e.g. dump in lots of sound and put an antinode in the channel volume, or set up currents to produce a vortex). However, it's probably cheaper just to go down there with submarines and/or scuba gear.
If you need an open-air environment to do the recovery properly (which would actually be _bad_ for most shipwrecks), pressurize an inflatable dome down there (using suitable gas mix instead of ordinary air if at any significant depth). Your divers are already acclimatized to the pressure, so no ultra-strong submarine hull is needed (keep dome pressure slightly over ambient).