Nonlinear pattern formation occurs throughout nature, in everything from sand ripples on a beach, snowflakes, the population ecology of lemmings, and much, much more. Faraday waves are an archetypical nonlinear pattern formation system for laboratory study, and the same experimental system can be used to observe oscillons, a soliton-like localized excitation. This experiment is inspired by research carried out by Prof. Stephen Morris's Experimental Nonlinear Physics Group.
(The experiment is currently located in MP239; last write-up revision: September 2011.)
Additional resources:
- "An experimental study of the onset of parametrically pumped surface waves in viscous fluids", J. Bechhoefer et al., Journal of Fluid Mechanics 288 (1995) 325-350.
- "Experimental study of the Faraday instability", S. Douady, Journal of Fluid Mechanics 221 (1990) 383-409.
- Localized spatiotemporal chaos in surface waves, A. Kudrolli and J. P. Gollub, Phys. Rev. E 54 (1996) R1052–R1055.
- "Vertically forced surface wave in weakly viscous fluids bounded in a circular cylindrical vessel", Y.J. Jian and X.Q. E, Chinese Physics 13 (2004) 1191-1200.
- "Localized excitations in a vertically vibrated granular layer", P.B. Umbanhowar, F. Melo,and H.L. Swinnery, Nature 382 (1996) 793-796.
- "Dispersion Relation of Standing Waves on a Vertically Oscillated Thin Granular Layer", A. Ugawa and O. Sano, Journal of the Physical Society of Japan 71 (2002) 2815–2819.
PHY426 student Boris Braverman performing the Faraday Waves and Oscillons experiment, 15 February 2011
Last updated on 30 November 2011