Physicists have solved a biblical mystery about the measures of grain and retribution
MOSCOW, may 15 — RIA Novosti. Physics and mathematics of the Australia found a way to maximally densely Packed wheat grains, elongated capsules of drugs or nanoparticles, having thus the parable of the recompense of the Bible, says in an article published in the journal Nature Communications.
“In the gospel of Luke is the following line — “give and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, pumped and perepolneny be poured into your lap; for whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.” This verse mentions all those things that we did in the laboratory — were squeezed, shook and poured. Of course, I’m not sure that the authors of the Bible meant the same thing we are,” jokes Mohammed Sadachar (Mohammad Saadatfar) from the Australian National University in Canberra.
However, the physicist acknowledges that the Bible is one of the first to put a major and yet unsolved problems of mathematics, physics and chemistry how you can place a grain of wheat or any other elongated structures, where possible, be tightly and firmly Packed. The solution of this problem requires, in particular, in order to most effectively carry loads, to build more durable buildings out of sand and to distribute the nanoparticles according to the materials of the future.
Nature, as they say scientists have long solved this problem for crystals and alloys in their crystalline lattices, the atoms are “Packed” as tightly as possible. For example, atoms of chlorine and sodium in the crystals of ordinary table salt occupy more than 74% of space due to the packing in the so-called face-centered cubic Atoms inside a cube arranged so that each side is five ions of chlorine and sodium.
All attempts to “shrink” the grains or nanoparticles in a similar way have failed — in the best case, the scientists managed to get them to take about 64% of the total volume of the material forming the structure of random forms.
Sadachar and his colleagues decided to find out why grain is impossible to shrink even more, studying the manner of packing of the nanoparticles of polyacrylate, which physicists poured into containers of different sizes and shapes — cylinders, spherical and rectangular bowl, and “settled” with the help of generators vibration.
Prospecive these structures using x-ray and computed tomography, Sadachar and his colleagues found that they really are not random, but organized in sets of five glued together pyramid, composed of three nanoparticles. Structures of this type, as physicists say, cannot Packed more tightly, if not to force them to turn into a cubic crystals — they will inevitably receive large pores and cavities.
This is not as easy as it might seem, since it needs to apply a very precise amount of energy, not to destroy “crystals” and thus make them unstable enough to transform to cubic structure. Further experiments on the “tapped” and observing the movement of nanoparticles, as scientists hope, will help to understand how it can be done.