At a Glance
- A University of Massachusetts Amherst team discovered that a mixture of oil, water, and magnetized nickel particles separated into a stable, urn-like shape, challenging long-standing ideas about liquid mixtures.
- The experiment, based on emulsification, like making salad dressing, showed that magnetized particles increased the tension between oil and water instead of reducing it, causing the liquids to form a stable curved shape.
- Graduate student Anthony Raykh and professors Thomas Russell and David Hoagland investigated the surprising result and found that the magnetic particles interfered with the emulsification process, increasing tension.
- This discovery challenges the current understanding of how liquids and particles interact, with potential implications for soft-matter physics and material science.
- Although it has no immediate application, the findings could lead to new ways of studying and manipulating materials, especially in technologies that involve microscopic interactions between substances.
A surprising discovery made by a team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst challenges long-standing ideas about how liquid mixtures behave. The researchers worked with a mixture of oil, water, and magnetized nickel particles when they found that the liquids didn’t behave as expected. Instead of mixing, as the laws of thermodynamics suggest, the liquids separated into a stable and unusual shape that looked like a Grecian urn.
This experiment, whose results were published in Nature Physics, started with a basic concept many people are familiar with: making salad dressing. When you shake oil and water with spices, the two liquids mix, a process known as emulsification. Normally, the addition of small particles, like spices, helps oil and water mix by lowering the tension between them. However, the result was completely unexpected when magnetized particles were used in this experiment. Instead of mixing, the liquids formed a stable, curved shape that always returned to the same urn-like form, no matter how much the mixture was shaken.
The lead researcher, graduate student Anthony Raykh, was baffled by this result. He shared his findings with his professors, including Thomas Russell and David Hoagland, who decided to investigate further. The team found the magnetic particles were strong enough to interfere with the normal emulsification process. Instead of reducing the tension between the oil and water, the particles increased the tension, causing the boundary between the liquids to bend into a curve. This phenomenon could change how scientists understand how liquids and particles interact.
While this discovery has no immediate application, it opens up new questions in soft-matter physics. The unusual behavior of these mixtures could lead to new ways of studying and manipulating materials in the future, especially in technologies that rely on the interaction of different substances at the microscopic level. This research, published in Nature Physics, shows how seemingly simple experiments can lead to groundbreaking discoveries that challenge our understanding of the physical world.
References
- University of Massachusetts Amherst. (2025, April 4). An exception to the laws of thermodynamics: Shape-recovering liquid defies textbooks. Phys.Org; University of Massachusetts Amherst. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-exception-laws-thermodynamics-recovering-liquid.html
- Raykh, A., Paulsen, J. D., McGlasson, A., Joshi, C., Atherton, T. J., Kandula, H. N., Hoagland, D. A., & Russell, T. P. (2025). Shape-recovering liquids. Nature Physics, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-025-02865-1
