Properties of balanced flows with bottlenecks: Common stylized facts in finance and vibration-driven vehicles

We study experimentally the properties of the flow of mechanical vibration-driven vehicles confined in two chambers connected through a narrow opening. We report that the density of particles around the opening presents critical behavior and scaling properties. By mapping this density to the financial market price, we document that the main stylized facts observed in financial systems have their counterparts in the mechanical system. The experimental model accurately reproduces financial properties such as scaling of the price fluctuation, volatility clustering, and multiscaling.