Buckling and zipping of a magnetic ring under gravity

Ring-shaped assemblies of magnetic beads behave similarly to a flexible, elastic annulus. In this paper, the authors perform a tabletop experiment with rings under gravity and report that initially circular rings experience flattening as the number of magnetic beads grows, until they reach a zipping state, where opposite sites stick together. The experiments are supported by a theoretical model and simulations that predict the observed scaling laws.#TheoryExperiment #ClearMotivation #BroadlyAccessible