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Decades-old mathematics might finally explain some features of the 'oddballs' of matter: granular materials that sometimes behave like a solid, and at other times flow like a liquid.Poured slowly through a constriction, sand – or rice, or coffee – will flow freely.
To avoid sudden blockages where a gentle flow is desired, we'd need to understand how and when this sudden shift happens. Two US-based physicists now think they've found a way to describe the behavior of granular materials nearing that 'jamming point'. That problem becomes increasingly complicated when you consider it involves various materials in industries as diverse as agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and construction. We're talking compacting granules into pellets to make pills, processing cereals and, in civil engineering, predicting the behaviors of different sediments
Specifically, Narayan and Mathur were looking at vibrations within bead packs. Although it varies from batch to batch, beads vibrate at certain frequencies, creating a 'spectrum' of vibrational frequencies.
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