Amazing Slow Motion Bead Chain Experiment | Slow Mo | The Travel Edit
Why Physics Stack Exchange recommends it
Physics Stack Exchange users link it as the source of the self-siphoning bead phenomenon that several questions and answers try to explain.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2013 to 2018.
What it is
A short slow-motion film in which science presenter Steve Mould demonstrates and explains the self-siphoning bead chain, also called Newton's Beads or the chain fountain. The beads climb out of a beaker and pour to the floor, shown in slow motion. It is from The Travel Edit (Earth Unplugged) series.
Cited in 2 Wikipedia articles, including Siphon, Chain fountain.
What people said
Cites dotancohen · 2013-07 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Beads in 'perpetual motion'?”
This page has an interesting video of beads 'syphoning' out of a glass beaker: [this video] The host has a few explanations for the effect, but none of them sound plausible to me. The beads are in 'perpetual motion'? 'Shock wave'? What could cause an entire bead chain to syphon out of a beaker like water does out of a syphon? It certainly does not look to me that there was enough initial investment in energy to move the chain as is done. On the other hand, considering that only a small portion of the chain is moving at any one moment in time, the whole system could be considered to be moving very slowly thus meeting the initial energy investment requirement (very low velocity).
Cites diffeomorphism · 2014-10 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “Beads flying out of flask”
There is a popular youtube video of some metal beads [this video] being thrown out of a flask, literally hovering out of the container My question is how detailed a physical explanation of this phenomenon we have? Question: More precisely, if we used the best available mechanical physics simulator software, and we tried to simulate this behavior, would the software be able to reproduce the effect or not? My guess is not but I would like to know why not. Or do we have to content ourselves only with handwaved explanations? I am from the school of thought that you don't understand physics until you have a reasonable certainty that you can reproduce the physics in a computer.
Cites fyodrpetrovich · 2018-01 · Physics Stack Exchange · on “The mystery behind the self-siphoning beads”
That is a cool video! They also link to an "explainer video" [this video] . Once a few beads are free to fall, they do (because of gravity). Falling converts potential energy to kinetic energy, but they share their kinetic energy with the other beads, giving them the energy to move. Now since the chain hangs over the edge of the container, it can only pull the inner beads up. When the falling chain is long enough, it pulls with so much force that the resting beads jump. You could describe the system mathematically like this: $E = Mgh + \frac{1}{2}ms^2 - \text{frictional losses}$ where $M$ is the mass of all the beads, $h$ is the average height of the beads, $m$ is the mass of the moving beads, an