| Mon December 10th 2007 11:00 | Seminar | Collisions of granular jets: Emergence of a liquid with zero surface- tension Sidney Nagel |
Details:When one or two particles strike a smooth wall at normal incidence, they rebound in the direction whence they came. Yet, a dense stream of particles hitting a target deforms into a thin sheet with a shape resembling the bells created by an impinging water jet. How do individual scattering events from a target produce shapes that mimic a zero-surface-tension liquid? This question, which can be posed and investigated with granular materials, has its counterpart in the microscopic situation of the quark-gluon plasma caused by high-energy collisions of gold ions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The scattering patterns in those experiments are indicative of a quark- gluon liquid. Our findings provide a macroscopic, purely classical example of how interactions, mediated by rapid collisions in a densely packed region, give rise to similar liquid behavior. | ||
