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A UMass Amherst graduate student may have accidentally created a mysterious liquid that defies scientific laws – and seems strangely devoted to the shape of ancient Greek pottery.
While conducting routine lab experiments with fluids and magnetic materials, Anthony Raykh stumbled upon a liquid that, no matter how much it is shaken, reforms into the shape of a Grecian urn. This style of ancient Greek pottery is known for its tall, symmetrical curves and elegant form – often used for storing wine, oil or water in antiquity.
The discovery, now the subject of a scientific study, challenges what researchers thought they knew about how liquids behave.
Under normal conditions, liquids like oil and water do not mix. Water molecules have slightly charged ends that pull them together, while oil molecules lack those charges.
Surfactants, such as those found in soap or egg yolk, act as a bridge to help these substances blend in a process known as emulsification. This behavior is well understood and aligns with the laws of thermodynamics.
Raykh was testing combinations of non-mixing liquids when he added tiny magnetized nickel particles and shook the mixture vigorously.
Instead of blending or separating as predicted, the fluid formed a smooth, stable urn-like shape inside the container – and kept doing so every time.
“I thought ‘what is this thing?’” Raykh said. “So, I walked up and down the halls of the Polymer Science and Engineering Department, knocking on my professors’ doors, asking them if they knew what was going on.”
With no immediate answers, two professors at UMass Amherst contacted researchers at Tufts and Syracuse universities to help run computer simulations.
“When you see something that shouldn’t be possible, you have to investigate,” said Thomas Russell, a professor of polymer science and engineering and senior author on the paper.
The team discovered that instead of aiding mixing, the magnetic particles disrupted the process. They increase surface tension between the liquids, forming a tight, structured boundary.
“The particles are magnetized strongly enough that their assembly interferes with the process of emulsification, which the laws of thermodynamics describe,” said David Hoagland, a professor of polymer science. They create a network on the surface of the liquid, forming a sort of scaffold that holds the shape.
The particles formed a loose, string-like pattern across the surface, with openings that allowed small movements between droplets. Despite this, the overall structure remained stable.
Researchers noted that the urn-like shape always appeared in a cylindrical container, suggesting that the vessel itself influenced the form.
Although the discovery of this new liquid that defies the laws to take shape of Greek pottery has no immediate application, scientists believe it could lead to new insights in soft-matter physics, a field that explores materials with unusual properties.
