The Museum will be closed on Thanksgiving Day. Weekend Hours

Avalanche Disk

Take granular physics for a spin as you rotate the Avalanche Disk. One grain by itself is a solid, but many grains together can behave like a solid, a liquid or even a gas. Filled with a two-tone mixture of white glass beads and red garnet sand, the 20-foot, inclined Avalanche Disk provides a window for watching granules flow, shear, mix, separate and freeze. You can control the disk's rotations, accelerating and decelerating to see how granular matter can defy expectations of how solid matter behaves.

Produced under a license granted by Ned Kahn.