A 17 year old Pakistani high school student, Muhammad Shaheer Niazi recently published his work on the electric honeycomb phenomenon in the prestigious Royal Society Open Science journal, reported the New York Times.
In 2016, Shaheer became the first ever Pakistani to Participate in the International Young Physicists’ Tournament where he provided a visual demonstration of this scientific phenomenon. Through a practical demonstration he proved that heat gradients are produced when a drop of oil is subjected to heat and that heat is not uniformly distributed through the oil droplet. Moreover, he showed that when electrically charged particles are made to travel through the oil droplet they align themselves into a polygonal pattern that physicists refer to as The Rose Window Instability.
Muhammad Shaheer Niazi recently published his work on the electric honeycomb phenomenon in the prestigious Royal Society Open Science journal
Shaheer’s study is based on the premise that above a certain voltage freely charged particles work to restore balance by moving in a polygonal shaped circuit resembling a wax honeycomb.
He photographed images of the procedure using the Schlieren photographic technique that shows the oil surface transforming into an electric honeycomb with the flow of electric charge. The manner in which electric particles travel through a fluid medium has applications in printing, heating, and biomedicine.
This is based on one of the fundamental laws of physics which states that everything in nature seeks to create balance and regain order. In this case the ions are the main cause of instability which subsequently self-organize to form a polygon thus making the system stable.
Shaheer’s work was inspired by Dr Alberto T. Pérez Izquierdo, a physicist at the University of Seville in Spain who termed his work an outstanding achievement at such a young age.
Shaheer received support from Dr. Farida from COMSATS University and worked under the guidance of Dr. Sabieh Anwar at PhysLab at LUMS during the summer of 2016 where he received full access to the laboratories and equipment for carrying out his experimentation and research.
Young Shaheer aspires to further his research on the electric honeycomb and aims to win a Nobel Prize one day.
References:
http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/4/10/170503
http://www.peacepak.pk/17-year-old-pakistani-students-physics-paper-surprises-older-scientist/
