When a graduate student unintentionally combined oil, water, and nickel, an unusual shape was created. The shape-recovering liquid was found to violate the rules of thermodynamics. The liquid combination assumed the shape of a Grecian urn rather than reducing the interfacial area and becoming a sphere. The results of this study, which was carried out by a group at the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the direction of doctoral student Anthony Raykh, were released in the Journal of Nature Physics on April 4.
The Accidental Discovery
Raykh, a polymer science and engineering student, was reportedly experimenting with a mixture of water, oil, and nickel particles in a container. He shook the bottle to make an emulsion. Instead of separating as it should have, the mixture took the form of a Grecian urn. The liquid maintained taking on this shape even after shaking the mixture several times. According to Thomas Russell, a professor of polymer science and engineering, the particles’ behavior is peculiar, as he told Live Science. Such a mixture does not blend and instead returns to equilibrium, which makes it somewhat peculiar.
A Challenge to Thermodynamics
Prior to emulsion, the blend tends to decrease the interfacial area or line of separation between the two liquids. This tendency is controlled by the law of thermodynamics, which explains the relationships between temperature, work, heat, and energy. The liquid often condenses into spherical droplets with a small surface area. The scientists are perplexed by the Grecian urn’s larger surface area, which defies the law of nature.
Magnetic Interactions Take Over
After the investigation of this strange behaviour of the particles, they found that the interactions between the particles of nickel “sort of took over” and defied the law of thermodynamics, Russell says. The magnetic poles of the particles attracted each other, making a chain on the surface of the liquid. This interaction intersects with the phenomenon of emulsion of the liquid. Russell told the researchers have examined the separation of the particles in an oil-water blend. But in contrast to this, Raykh had added nickel to the mixture, which nobody else did. Thus, none had observed the shape of the Grecian urn with higher interficial energy.
A Strange Case, Not a Violation
Initially, this seemed to challenge the law of thermodynamics, but Russell clarified that this is a strange behaviour of the particles due to the magnetic field. This magnetic field influenced a high interfacial energy, which resulted in the formation of a higher surface area shape.
Russell says the law of thermodynamics applies to the system as a whole and not just based on interactions between the individual particles.
