2,431 research outputs found
Hexagonal convection patterns in atomistically simulated fluids
Molecular dynamics simulation has been used to model pattern formation in
three-dimensional Rayleigh--Benard convection at the discrete-particle level.
Two examples are considered, one in which an almost perfect array of
hexagonally-shaped convection rolls appears, the other a much narrower system
that forms a set of linear rolls; both pattern types are familiar from
experiment. The nature of the flow within the convection cells and quantitative
aspects of the development of the hexagonal planform based on automated polygon
subdivision are analyzed. Despite the microscopic scale of the system,
relatively large simulations with several million particles and integration
timesteps are involved.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures (color figures have low resolution, high
resolution figures available on author's website) Minor changes to text. To
appear in PRE (Rapid Comm
Leaving College: Why Students Withdrew from a University
The purpose of this study was to determine the reasons why students withdrew during a semester from a mid-sized, comprehensive university located in the Midwest. Six hundred forty-five students were asked to complete the ACT Withdrawing/Non-returning Student Survey during the 1992-93 academic year and summer semester. Three hundred sixty-five completed surveys were returned for a 57% response rate.
Respondents indicated many different reasons for leaving which varied by year in school and whether or not the respondent was a graduate or undergraduate student. There was no typical withdrawing student and there were many reasons students withdrew over which the university has little or no control. The report concludes with a discussion of Vincent Tinto\u27s (1993) ideas concerning institutional departure.
The retention and persistence of students in higher education has been the focus of serious intellectual inquiry for many years. Various concepts of institutional departure, persistence and models for programmatic interventions to reduce departure have been developed. (For example, see Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Stage & Rushin, 1993; Steele, Kennedy, & Gordon, 1993; Tinto, 1993; Wolfe, 1993.) The purpose of this study was to focus on one aspect of student attrition, and. to investigate the reasons and general trends as . to why students withdrew during a semester from a midsized comprehensive university located in the Midwest. This information could then be used to guide institutional action
Molecular dynamics simulations of ballistic annihilation
Using event-driven molecular dynamics we study one- and two-dimensional
ballistic annihilation. We estimate exponents and that describe
the long-time decay of the number of particles () and of
their typical velocity (). To a good accuracy our results
confirm the scaling relation . In the two-dimensional case our
results are in a good agreement with those obtained from the Boltzmann kinetic
theory.Comment: 4 pages; some changes; Physical Review E (in press
Memory effects on the statistics of fragmentation
We investigate through extensive molecular dynamics simulations the
fragmentation process of two-dimensional Lennard-Jones systems. After
thermalization, the fragmentation is initiated by a sudden increment to the
radial component of the particles' velocities. We study the effect of
temperature of the thermalized system as well as the influence of the impact
energy of the ``explosion'' event on the statistics of mass fragments. Our
results indicate that the cumulative distribution of fragments follows the
scaling ansatz , where is
the mass, and are cutoff parameters, and is a scaling
exponent that is dependent on the temperature. More precisely, we show clear
evidence that there is a characteristic scaling exponent for each
macroscopic phase of the thermalized system, i.e., that the non-universal
behavior of the fragmentation process is dictated by the state of the system
before it breaks down.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figure
Hard Spheres: Crystallization and Glass Formation
Motivated by old experiments on colloidal suspensions, we report molecular
dynamics simulations of assemblies of hard spheres, addressing crystallization
and glass formation. The simulations cover wide ranges of polydispersity s
(standard deviation of the particle size distribution divided by its mean) and
particle concentration. No crystallization is observed for s > 0.07. For 0.02 <
s < 0.07, we find that increasing the polydispersity at a given concentration
slows down crystal nucleation. The main effect here is that polydispersity
reduces the supersaturation since it tends to stabilise the fluid but to
destabilise the crystal. At a given polydispersity (< 0.07) we find three
regimes of nucleation: standard nucleation and growth at concentrations in and
slightly above the coexistence region; "spinodal nucleation", where the free
energy barrier to nucleation appears to be negligible, at intermediate
concentrations; and, at the highest concentrations, a new mechanism, still to
be fully understood, which only requires small re-arrangement of the particle
positions. The cross-over between the second and third regimes occurs at a
concentration, around 58% by volume, where the colloid experiments show a
marked change in the nature of the crystals formed and the particle dynamics
indicate an "ideal" glass transition
Stratified horizontal flow in vertically vibrated granular layers
A layer of granular material on a vertically vibrating sawtooth-shaped base
exhibits horizontal flow whose speed and direction depend on the parameters
specifying the system in a complex manner. Discrete-particle simulations reveal
that the induced flow rate varies with height within the granular layer and
oppositely directed flows can occur at different levels. The behavior of the
overall flow is readily understood once this novel feature is taken into
account.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, submitte
Role of reversibility in viral capsid growth: A paradigm for self-assembly
Self-assembly at submicroscopic scales is an important but little understood
phenomenon. A prominent example is virus capsid growth, whose underlying
behavior can be modeled using simple particles that assemble into polyhedral
shells. Molecular dynamics simulation of shell formation in the presence of an
atomistic solvent provides new insight into the self-assembly mechanism,
notably that growth proceeds via a cascade of strongly reversible steps and,
despite the large variety of possible intermediates, only a small fraction of
highly bonded forms appear on the pathway.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures (slightly shorter version, new Fig.2); further
minor change
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