Showmanship

Part of the fun of experimenting with granular materials, says Stephen W. Morris, is the showmanship. In one stunt that he has demonstrated in settings ranging from high school classrooms to television studios, the University of Toronto physicist load clear plastic tubes with white table salt and black sand and start them rotating. What transpires in the tubes usually knocks the socks off of any unsuspecting bystander. Instead of mixing into a drab grey sameness, the sand particles slowly separate into crisp black bands, cutting across a long, narrow field of salt. As the spinning continues, some bands disappear and new ones arise. "It's a parlor trick," Morris says. Not to deny its entertainment value, this demonstration of how strangely granular materials can behave is also an authentic experiment in a field both rich in fundamental physics and major practical consequences.