Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Granular media

Structures in sand streams

Nature volume 459, pages 1064–1065 (2009)Cite this article

An ingenious experiment that involves dropping a costly, high-speed video camera from a height of several metres reveals how free-falling streams of granular matter, such as sand, break up into grain clusters.

It is common knowledge that when a stone is thrown into a pond, a jet of water shoots upwards. High-speed video imaging and even snapshots taken with short exposure times reveal that the jet breaks up into droplet patterns. Such patterns have inspired artists such as Andrew Davidhazy. What is both remarkable and intriguing is that very similar arrangements are observed in the streams that emerge when a stone is dropped into loose, fine sand1. The common view, which we have also adhered to, about the origin of this striking, liquid-like behaviour of streams of sand or other granular materials has been that the inelastic nature of collisions between the grains causes them to cluster together into larger structures2,3,4. But on page 1110 of this issue, Royer and colleagues5 show that this view is wrong, and that forces hitherto believed to be too small to cause the clustering are at work.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Rupture of streams.

a, CAMBRIDGE UNIV. PRESS; b, AM. PHYS. SOC.

References

  1. Lohse, D. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 198003 (2004).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Jaeger, H. M., Nagel, S. R. & Behringer, R. P. Rev. Mod. Phys. 68, 1259–1273 (1996).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Kadanoff, L. Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, 435–444 (1999).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Goldhirsch, I. Annu. Rev. Fluid Mech. 35, 267–293 (2003).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Royer, J. R. et al. Nature 459, 1110–1113 (2009).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. de Gennes, P.-G., Brochard-Wyart, F. & Quere, D. Capillarity and Wetting Phenomena: Drops, Bubbles, Pearls, Waves (Springer, 2003).

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  7. Duran, J. Sands, Powders, and Grains 1st edn (Springer, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  8. Moseler, M. & Landman, U. Science 289, 1165–1169 (2000).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Johansen, A. et al. Nature 448, 1022–1025 (2007).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Rutland, D. F. & Jameson, G. J. J. Fluid Mech. 46, 267–271 (1971).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science and Technology, Detlef Lohse and Devaraj van der Meer are in the Physics of Fluids Group, J. M. Burgers Center, and at the Impact and Mesa+ Institutes, University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, the Netherlands. d.lohse@utwente.nl,

    Detlef Lohse & Devaraj van der Meer

Authors
  1. Detlef Lohse
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Devaraj van der Meer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Lohse, D., van der Meer, D. Structures in sand streams. Nature 459, 1064–1065 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/4591064a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/4591064a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing