Omkar's Journal: Granular Matter Paper

If you pour sand onto a flat surface to form a pile, how does the impact energy of the sand determine the shape of the pile? This question has interested philosophers for ages. It has remained one of science's open problems, physics's answer to the Riemann hypothesis.

Or not. But anyway, I found it interesting, so I'm writing a paper about it for my IB extended essay. For those of you unfamiliar with IB, this is the equivalent of a senior research project.

I've just finished a "reasonably-final" draft of the paper. It's not hard to read, give it a look. Of course, it isn't really light bedtime reading. Most of my friends found it interesting, though.

Some readers (of my audience of three) are probably thinking, "Why the hell do we care about sandpiles?" Well, first of all, granular materials are really important in industry, geology, and other practical areas. Second, the pile is also a way to visualize the idea of self-organized criticality. SOC says that some systems evolve toward a critical point on their own, without having to have fine-tuned parameters. This idea is in vogue right now; it's been applied to everything from pendula to mass extinctions. Pretty neat. There's more to sand than meets the eye.

Fantastic stuff.

[The Cydonian]

Thanks for sharing; am going through your paper even as we speak. This whole notion of granularity is interesting, never heard about it till now, and I can already see where this might lead.

Heck, I have an idea this might be useful for my research project as well... :-|

Re:Fantastic stuff.

[Omkar]

So, any suggestions?

And don't steal my paper! ;)

Re:Fantastic stuff.

[The Cydonian]

Suggestions => still going through it! (As in, trying to get your references now... need to read up some more on the topic before forming an opinion).

Stealing => Naah, don't worry. I'll only write about "The Dependence of the Angle of Repose on the Impact Energy of Input Grains in a Driven Granular Heap", where we investigate the relationship between the angle of repose of a driven three-dimensional pile of sand and the impact energy of the input grains. We experimentally find a clear linear dependen