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If you take more than 10 percent of the fruit in a stacked produce display — watch out.
The iconic sloped produce displays in grocery stores can cause chaos when they collapse. But the question of how much fruit can be removed before the structure comes tumbling down is surprisingly complicated. A new study, published in the December Physical Review E, finally provides an answer.
Fruit display collapses are a good system for studying the dynamics that produce avalanches and landslides because they’re relatively simple, says physicist Eduardo Rojas of the University of Antofagasta in Chile (SN: 1/4/16). All the objects are arranged in a nonrandom, crystallike form and are roughly the same size and shape — unlike the earth of a mountainside, for instance. This makes it easier to examine the impact of removing one object on the overall structure.
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