UMass Amherst Team Finds Exception to Laws of Thermodynamics

A team of researchers led by Anthony Raykh, physics graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently made the surprising discovery of what they call a “shape-recovering liquid,” which defies some long-held expectations derived from the laws of thermodynamics. The research, published in Nature Physics, details a mixture of oil, water and magnetized particles that, when shaken, always quickly separates into what looks like the classically curvaceous lines of a Grecian urn.

“Imagine your favorite Italian salad dressing,” says Thomas Russell, Silvio O. Conte Distinguished Professor of Polymer Science and Engineering at UMass Amherst and one of the paper’s senior authors. “It’s made up of oil, water and spices, and before you pour it onto your salad, you shake it up so that all the ingredients mix.” It’s those spices, those small bits of something else, that allow water and oil, which are normally mutually exclusive, to mix, a process called emulsification and which is described by the laws of thermodynamics.