‘Dancing’ raisins – a simple kitchen experiment shows how objects can draw energy from their environment and come to life

Scientific discoveries do not always require a high-tech laboratory or a large budget. Many people have a first-class laboratory in their own home: their kitchen.

The kitchen offers plenty of opportunities to view and discover what physicists call soft matter and complex liquids. Everyday phenomena, like Cheerios clustering in milk or rings left behind when coffee drops evaporate, have led to discoveries at the intersection of physics and chemistry and other tasty collaborations between food scientists and physicists.

Two students, Sam Christianson and Carsen Grote, and I published a new study in Nature Communications in May 2024 that addresses another ...