Challenging experiment on the way to discover physical laws that govern onset, rise, transformation and vanishing of fabulous patterns on the surface of a layer of sand in periodically changed gravitational field.
2010 summer project students Yun Tao Bai (Department of Physics) and Connor Holmes (Engineering Science Division) managed to observe oscillons on a surface of a layer of fine steel spheres. What made the oscillon moving along the surface? Do we see the other four oscillons that cannot reach the surface by some reason? Why does the oscillon disappear finally?
2011 SURF students Jeremy McGibbon (Department of Physics) and Rachel Zhao (Engineering Science Division) observed fabulous pictures of emerging and vanishing stripes, squares and hexagons on the surface of a layer of fine bronze beads.
Every research starts with studying theoretical background and experiments of other research groups. A list of recommended articles and reports will be helpful in finding the most important sources of information. All of them are available on the Internet or in the library. You will get a hard copy of majority of the listed sources.
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Last updated February 29, 2012