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Experimental study of critical-mass fluctuations in an evolving sandpile
Abstract
We have carried out an experiment in which sandpiles are built up to a critical size and then perturbed by the dropping of individual grains of sand onto the pile. After each grain is added, the size of the resulting avalanche, if any, is recorded. For sufficiently small sandpiles, the observed mass fluctuations are scale invariant and the probability distribution of avalanches shows finite-size scaling. This demonstrates that real, finite-size sandpiles may be described by models of self-organized criticality. However, we also find that this description breaks down in the limit of large sandpiles.
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Citations
Cited by
Physical approach to complex systems
Kwapień, J., & Drożdż, S. (2012) · Physics Reports · doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2012.01.007 · Cited by 517
Avalanche dynamics in a pile of rice
Frette, V., Christensen, K., Malthe-Sørenssen, A., Feder, J., Jøssang, T., & Meakin, P. (1996) · Nature · doi:10.1038/379049a0 · Cited by 477
Oxidative metabolism deficiencies in brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease
Hoyer, S. (1996) · Acta Neurologica Scandinavica · doi:10.1111/j.1600-0404.1996.tb05868.x · Cited by 88
Age as Risk Factor for Sporadic Dementia of the Alzheimer Type?
HOYER, S. (1994) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1994.tb56833.x · Cited by 38
Metadata
- Authors
- Held, G. A., Solina, D. H., Solina, H., Keane, D. T., Haag, W. J., Horn, P. M., & Grinstein, G.
- Venue
- Physical Review Letters
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 1990-08-27
- Volume
- 65
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1120-1123
- ISSN
- 0031-9007 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2025111887
- Cited by
- 370
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 11.78
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Held, G. A., Solina, D. H., Solina, H., Keane, D. T., Haag, W. J., Horn, P. M., & Grinstein, G. (1990). Experimental study of critical-mass fluctuations in an evolving sandpile. Physical Review Letters. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.65.1120
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