Access
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Scientific Correspondence
Nature 387, 765 (19 June 1997) |
Open Innovation Challenges
-
Methods to Analyze Consumer Emotions
The Seeker is looking for methods to analyze consumer emotions. This Challenge requires only a writ...
-
Single-cell Analysis Platform
This Challenge is looking for novel approaches to analyzing changes at a single-cell level. This is...
- More Challenges
- Powered by:
nature jobs
Manager for the Recently Established Fly Facility
- Max-Planck-Institute of Immunobiology
- Freiburg Germany
Two Lecturers or Readers in Earth and Life Systems
- University of East Anglia
- Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
What keeps sandcastles standing?
D. J. Hornbaker1, R. Albert1, I. Albert1, A.-L. Barabási1 & P. Schiffer1
Abstract
Any child playing on the beach knows that the physical properties of wet and dry sand are very different. Wet sand can be used to build sharp-featured sandcastles that would be unstable in dry sand. We have now quantified the effect of adding small quantities of liquid to a granular medium. Nanometre-scale layers of liquid on millimetre-scale grains dramatically increase the repose angle (the steepest stable slope that the substance can form) and allow the development of long-range correlations, or clumps.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
