Science of Sandcastles is Clarified, Finally

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Science of sandcastles is clarified, finally:

Researchers at The University of Manchester led by Nobel Laureate Andre Geim -- who, with Kostya Novoselov, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics 10 years ago this month -- have made artificial capillaries small enough for water vapour to condense inside them under normal, ambient conditions.

The Manchester study is entitled 'Capillary condensation under atomic-scale confinement' and will be published in Nature. The research provides a solution for the century-and-half-old puzzle of why capillary condensation, a fundamentally microscopic phenomenon involving a few molecular layers of water, can be described reasonably well using macroscopic equations and macroscopic characteristics of bulk water. Is it a coincidence or a hidden law of nature?

Capillary condensation, a textbook phenomenon, is omnipresent in the world around us, and such important properties as friction, adhesion, stiction, lubrication and corrosion are strongly affected by capillary condensation. This phenomenon is important in many technological processes used by microelectronics, pharmaceutical, food and other industries -- and even sandcastles could not be built by children if not for capillary condensation.

[...] "So we can relax, all those numerous condensation effects and related properties are now backed by hard evidence rather than a hunch that 'it seems to work so therefore it should be OK to use the equation'."

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