The Brazil Nut Effect

The Brazil Nut Effect is the fact that when you shake up a mixture like you're about to see them do here, the largest particles will always rise to the top and the smallest ones will always rise to the bottom. And you've probably seen this all around in life, but you probably didn't know how much money this is actually costing pharmaceutical companies every single year. Now the reason this happens is because when you shake any mixture, small pockets of air and end up showing up. And while gravity is pulling down on everything, the small pockets of air are filled much quicker by smaller particles than they are by large particles because it's easier for the small particles to get there. This leaves the big particles on the top. And you've seen this every day in your cereal, and your Lego sets where all the smallest pieces sink right to the bottom, and in your bag of chips where when you finally get to the bottom, all that's left is the dust and there's no actual big chips left. For pharmaceutical companies, this can actually get really expensive. Because if you're trying to mix two separate powders into one pill, the more dense pill will rise to the top and you won't actually get an even mixture or dosage among all the pills that you create. So they have to manually fill each pill with 20% this and 80% that to avoid the Brazil Nut Effect.