January 25, 2004

A Ping-Pong Ball Avalance

Jim McElwaine researches the dynamics of avalances.
Avalanches are sometimes treated as a special sort of granular flow. These have been studied for a long time but because they can have solids, fluid and gaseous properties satisfactory theories do not exist except in special situations.
Which leads to a most fantastic study. A bunch of ping-pong balls were released on a ski jump in Sapporo. By a bunch, I mean up to 300,000 in this Ping-Pong Ball Avalanche. What a noise this would have made. Just what a sight to see. Very cool experiment.
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