While reading this morning I found the article below to be very interesting.
Xeger writes “University of Chicago researchers have found that streams of sand can behave in a similar manner to liquids, forming water-like droplets when poured from a funnel. To obtain these results, they dropped their expensive high-speed camera from a height of several meters and observed the sand forming into droplets something that shouldn’t happen without surface tension. These findings suggest that conventional engineering wisdom about sand, dirt and other grainy materials needs to be rethought, and that it might be possible to apply fluid dynamics to some solids problems.”
Just when we think we know the answer we discover we didn’t fully comprehend the question–thanks to high-speed photography. ;-)
Who would have even thought of trying that? Each day is a classroom.
@Monte: So true. I’m amazed by discovers like this–basic principles we’ve so long overlooked.