Researchers Discover That Sand Behaves Like Water

Xeger writes "University of Chicago researchers have found that streams of sand can behave in a similar manner to liquids, forming water-like droplets when poured from a funnel. To obtain these results, they dropped their expensive high-speed camera from a height of several meters and observed the sand forming into droplets — something that shouldn't happen without surface tension. These findings suggest that conventional engineering wisdom about sand, dirt and other grainy materials needs to be rethought, and that it might be possible to apply fluid dynamics to some solids problems."

Comments

Re:They dropped their expensive camera?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Besides that, there is also the problem of the greater weight of the camera causing it to fall faster than the lighter grains of sand. Ideally, you'd want to observe the sand in as stationary and synchronized a manner as possible. However, if the camera is moving relative to the sand, it would be difficult to monitor any particular clump of falling sand.