Curling evolution of suspended threads replicates 2D self-avoiding walk phenomena and 1D crystallization process

Abstract

The conformation evolution of threads that fall freely after being released from varying altitudes was investigated and compared to behaviors generated by other well-known fundamental physical processes. It was observed that the thread conformation replicated the conformation of long polymer chains, motivating the authors to apply a 2D self-avoiding walk (SAW) model to explain their stable conformation. Strong evidence was identified that the thread conformation strongly resembles 2D SAW behavior and has scaling power comparable to that of a 2D SAW. Also, by fitting how thread end-to-end distance evolves with time, an equation was obtained that is exactly identical to the modified Avrami equation, which is usually used for explaining phase transformation processes in 1D space (D = 1). The exponential power of n = D + 1 = 2 was simply obtained in our fitting. In conclusion, it can strongly be stated that the evolution of thread conformation over time replicates the crystallization process in 1D space and an SAW in a 2D space, showing that these microscopic processes can be replicated at macroscopic scale.