Mystery of natural hexagonal column formations solved with kitchen materials | Canada Standard

Mystery of natural hexagonal column formations solved with kitchen materials

Canada Standard (ANI) Friday 26th December, 2008

Washington, Dec 26 : Physicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) have cracked the mystery behind the strange and uncannily well-ordered hexagonal columns found at such popular tourist sites as Northern Ireland's Giant's Causeway and California's Devil's Postpile, using water, corn starch, and a heat lamp.

"The size of the columns, which varies from site to site between a few inches and a few yards, is primarily determined by the speed at which lava from a volcanic eruption cools," said U of T physics professor Stephen Morris.

Cooling lava sometimes forms strange column-shaped formations with a remarkable degree of order.

The most famous of these hexagonal columns are found at the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland.

Using a combination of field observation, experiments and mathematical theory provided by Harvard University professor L. Mahadevan, researchers have solved the problem of what decides the size of the columns.

The key to understanding the size of the columns was to reproduce the phenomenon in the lab.

Using a mixture of water and corn starch, which cracks as it dries out and forms very similar columns - they carefully controlled the drying process, and established a relationship between the size of the columns and speed with which the drying front moved.

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