{"id":187,"date":"2009-11-02T12:57:55","date_gmt":"2009-11-01T23:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond_cornflakes\/"},"modified":"2009-11-02T12:57:55","modified_gmt":"2009-11-01T23:57:55","slug":"beyond-cornflakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond cornflakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is something that Aimee Whitcroft at the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz\/\">Science Media Centre<\/a> in Wellington drew my attention to &#8211; thanks Aimee.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us who have ever eaten breakfast cereal will probably be familiar with the phenomenon whereby the larger flakes of whatever-your-favourite-breakfast-is tend to be at the top of the packet, whereas the smaller flakes tend to accumulate at the bottom. This segregation of particle sizes is pretty common in physical processes. So it comes as no surprise that, when you stuff small beads of two different sizes into a container, and disturb them by rotating the container, the beads separate out in size, to give regions where large beads predominate, and regions where small beads predominate. That phenomenon has been known for seventy years &#8211; being first demonstrated by Yositsi Oyama.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But, what has been discovered&nbsp; recently&nbsp; by Ralf Stannarius and Frank Rietz is that, when you stuff even more beads into the container, and rotate&nbsp;it,&nbsp;the segregation patterns are not&nbsp;stable; instead you get&nbsp;rolling patterns reminiscent of convection currents (similar to the circulating currents in, say, a pot of water being heated from beneath). What is most intruiging is that there is as yet no full explanation of&nbsp;the phenomenon &#8211; the physical models that exist&nbsp;just don&#8217;t seem to be&nbsp;adequate for what&nbsp;is happening. You can <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2009\/10\/bead-cloud-mystery\/\">look at the movie<\/a> or, for those more physics-inclined, read the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/iep463.nat.uni-magdeburg.de\/w3fr\/PRL100_078002.pdf\">associated publication in Physical Review Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>That is&nbsp;what makes science so fun. Basically, <b>with equipment you can put together in your own shed<\/b>,&nbsp;you can demonstrate a phenomenon that is <b>beyond our current understanding<\/b>. We by no means know everything there is to know even about simple mechanical systems, as this example demonstrates. It begs the question as to what other effects are there that are just waiting to be discovered. So start experimenting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is something that Aimee Whitcroft at the Science Media Centre in Wellington drew my attention to &#8211; thanks Aimee. Most of us who have ever eaten breakfast cereal will probably be familiar with the phenomenon whereby the larger flakes of whatever-your-favourite-breakfast-is tend to be at the top of the packet, whereas the smaller flakes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,9,19,13],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Beyond cornflakes : Physics Stop<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beyond cornflakes : Physics Stop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This is something that Aimee Whitcroft at the Science Media Centre in Wellington drew my attention to &#8211; thanks Aimee. Most of us who have ever eaten breakfast cereal will probably be familiar with the phenomenon whereby the larger flakes of whatever-your-favourite-breakfast-is tend to be at the top of the packet, whereas the smaller flakes [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Physics Stop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-11-01T23:57:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Marcus\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Marcus\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/\",\"name\":\"Beyond cornflakes : Physics Stop\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2009-11-01T23:57:55+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2009-11-01T23:57:55+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#\/schema\/person\/34d359280e44f926f2df12eb3e50aa22\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-NZ\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Beyond cornflakes\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/\",\"name\":\"Physics Stop\",\"description\":\"A light-hearted look at everyday physics going on in the world, written by a physicist but intended for a general audience.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-NZ\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#\/schema\/person\/34d359280e44f926f2df12eb3e50aa22\",\"name\":\"Marcus\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/author\/mtwilson\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Beyond cornflakes : Physics Stop","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Beyond cornflakes : Physics Stop","og_description":"This is something that Aimee Whitcroft at the Science Media Centre in Wellington drew my attention to &#8211; thanks Aimee. Most of us who have ever eaten breakfast cereal will probably be familiar with the phenomenon whereby the larger flakes of whatever-your-favourite-breakfast-is tend to be at the top of the packet, whereas the smaller flakes [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/","og_site_name":"Physics Stop","article_published_time":"2009-11-01T23:57:55+00:00","author":"Marcus","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Marcus","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/","url":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/","name":"Beyond cornflakes : Physics Stop","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-11-01T23:57:55+00:00","dateModified":"2009-11-01T23:57:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#\/schema\/person\/34d359280e44f926f2df12eb3e50aa22"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-NZ","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2009\/11\/02\/beyond-cornflakes\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Beyond cornflakes"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#website","url":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/","name":"Physics Stop","description":"A light-hearted look at everyday physics going on in the world, written by a physicist but intended for a general audience.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-NZ"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/#\/schema\/person\/34d359280e44f926f2df12eb3e50aa22","name":"Marcus","url":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/author\/mtwilson\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}