Acoustic Emission from Breaking a Bamboo Chopstick

作者:Tsai, Sun-Ting; Wang, Li-Min; Huang, Panpan; Yang, Zhengning; Chang, Chin-De; Hong, Tzay-Ming*
来源:Physical Review Letters, 2016, 116(3): 035501.
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.035501

摘要

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 and Richter, Omori, and Bath. By the use of a force-sensing detector, we establish a positive correlation between the statistics of sound intensity and the magnitude of a tremor. We also manage to derive these laws analytically without invoking the concept of a 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.