That's a really cool article! One more step: self-organized criticality... At a 'critical angle', any additional grains of sand can trigger an avalanche. (Be c

That's a really cool article! One more step: self-organized criticality... At a 'critical angle', any additional grains of sand can trigger an avalanche. (Be careful though, this is a deeply fascinating rabbit hole!) Here's a nice paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252164461_Self-organized_criticality_An_experiment_with_sandpiles https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252164461_Self-orga... And an article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24936753 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24936753