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arXiv · 1509.00631

Acoustic Emission from Breaking a Bamboo Chopstick

Sun-Ting Tsai·Li-Min Wang·Panpan Huang·Zhengning Yang·Chin-De Chang·Tzay-Ming Hong
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Abstract

The acoustic emission from breaking a bamboo chopstick or a bundle of spaghetti is found to exhibit similar behavior as the famous seismic laws of Gutenberg-Richter, Omori, and Bath. By use of a force-sensing detector, we establish a positive correlation between the statistics of sound intensity and the magnitude of tremor. We also manage to derive these laws analytically without invoking the concept of phase transition, self-organized criticality, or fractal. Our model is deterministic and relies on the existence of a structured cross section, either fibrous or layered. This success at explaining the power-law behavior supports the proposal that geometry is sometimes more important than mechanics.

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Sun-Ting Tsai, Li-Min Wang, Panpan Huang, Zhengning Yang, Chin-De Chang, Tzay-Ming Hong. 2015-09-02. Acoustic Emission from Breaking a Bamboo Chopstick. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.116.035501

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