Granular Chains
E. Ben-Naim, Z. A. Daya, and R.E. Ecke
Granular chains are made of hollow steel balls connected by thin metal
rods. They can be purchased at your neighborhood hardware store. Add a
shaker and a little bit of imagination and you have a rich laboratory
for polymer physics, nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, nonlinear
dynamics, and biological physics. The attached video and the brief summaries below
highlight a series of our recent experiments in vibrated granular
chains.
source,
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