Fluids by design using chaotic surface waves to create a metafluid that is Newtonian, thermal, and entirely tunable.

In conventional fluids, viscosity depends on temperature according to a strict relationship. To change this relationship, one must change the molecular nature of the fluid. Here, we create a metafluid whose properties are derived not from the properties of molecules but rather from chaotic waves excited on the surface of vertically agitated water.

Atomistic study of macroscopic analogs to short-chain molecules.

We use a bath of chaotic surface waves in water to mechanically and macroscopically mimic the thermal behavior of a short articulated chain with only nearest-neighbor interactions. The chaotic waves provide isotropic and random agitation to which a temperature can be ascribed, allowing the chain to passively explore its degrees of freedom in analogy to thermal motion. We track the chain in real time and infer end-to-end potentials using Boltzmann statistics.

Ballistic and diffusive dynamics in a two-dimensional ideal gas of macroscopic chaotic Faraday waves.

We have constructed a macroscopic driven system of chaotic Faraday waves whose statistical mechanics, we find, are surprisingly simple, mimicking those of a thermal gas. We use real-time tracking of a single floating probe, energy equipartition, and the Stokes-Einstein relation to define and measure a pseudotemperature and diffusion constant and then self-consistently determine a coefficient of viscous friction for a test particle in this pseudothermal gas. Because of its simplicity, this system can serve as a model for direct experimental investigation of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, much as the ideal gas epitomizes equilibrium statistical mechanics.