that explains/describes putting different sized candies or rocks in a jar and shaking them up and observing the big ones go to the top and the little ones go to the bottom?

Um, Newtonian physics? The small particles fall between the large ones, and as they move to the bottom, they push the larger ones to the top. I don't know that there's a name for it.

The law of buoyancy? I almost failed physics.

'tisn't buoyancy

However, this reminded me of the principle of Isostasy, which is just really interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isostasy

One of those factoids that fleshes out your holistic understanding of how the world works, fun to know.

There is a name for it, but it eludes me. And apparently I'm not putting in the correct keywords to pull it up with Google.

gravity?

Hoofton-Miller's Law of Candy.

The Willy Wonka Principle!

Sedimentation principle, according to Wikipedia.

I think.

idk what it's called but I know what you're talkin' about.

Growing up I had a decent size box of Legos. Sure enough, the big and small ones, no matter how I put them back in, would always find a way to shift and move and p**s me the hell off when I had to dig through the next time I brought them out again.

It happens with my Honey Bunches of Oats

So I was asking a friend of mine whos studying to be PhD in astrophysics what the theory was. He apparently never had that experience with legos,

Me: "and when you were looking for the smaller peices, rumaging through the box, you never found that the small peices were mostly at the bottom?"
Him: "nope, it's just easier to find the big peices 'cause they're big"


I'm not impressed with him anymore. Anyone that can't play with legos like a normal kid just isn't right. :-P

I always tipped the lego BRICKS out onto a large simple blanket.

Well, sure, Deadman, but it wouldn't be hard for you to find it anyway since you only had the one lego.

*high five*

oh sure, start another stupid lego plural argument, that's smart =p

To be fair, you kicked it off. He took the ball and ran with it.


Would you look at that, a sports reference.

Too much...

SLAM DUNK

Centrifugation? Although I suspect it's a term coined by engineers, rather than the name of a scientific principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugation

I'm gonna argue Archimede's principle.

I'll assume both large and small particles are made of the same material and are roughly spherical (read: not all perfect interlocking cubes). I'll also assume for this argument that there are only two sizes, large and small.

Relative to the jar, the large particles have greater empty space between them than the small particles. (This can be shown geometrically, draw 1 circle within a square, then draw an increasing amount of circles within the square. As the # of circles approaches infinity, the total area within all circles approaches that of the square and the space between the circles approaches zero.) The same idea can be applied to spheres within a cube. Therefore, as a system of very many particles (THIS IS IMPORTANT)[/b], the large particles are less dense than the small particles.

I claim that a high number[/b] of these particles (large or small) falls under this definition of a fluid:



and therefore obeys Archimede's principle:



which essentially says that when fluids of differing densities are mixed, the lower density fluid floats on the higher density fluid.

Actually I think I messed up in there somewhere with the geometry.... I give up.

Ok, I'm an idiot with the math claim I made about the circles within a square, but the rest still works. Just don't imagine the circles perfectly arranged, but packed as tightly as possible such that you can fit the max # of circles within the square.

(fixed)

I did no such thing, I was just talking normally. If you're referring to BRICKS that was from me editing the post after he started it =p