NONTRIVIAL SCALING LAWS FOR A BLOCK SLIDING DOWN A ROUGH PLANE

摘要

The measured length distributions of slidings of solid cylinders of aluminum, brass, teflon, and polyvinyl chloride on an incline obey nontrivial scaling laws. No significant dependence of the scaling exponent on material is observed and the data obtained are in agreement with the Gutenberg-Richter law for the distribution of earthquakes and with numerical simulations exhibiting self-organized criticality made by Chen, Bak, and Obukhov [Phys. Rev. A 43, 625-630 (1991)]. (C) 1996 American Association of Physics Teachers. [References: 13]