MIXING…

How an Alloy UnmixesQuench a hot, evenly-blended mixture — an alloy, an oil-and-water emulsion, window glass — and it can’t stay uniform: the tiniest ripple in composition grows, and the two ingredients pull apart into a maze of interwoven blobs that slowly fatten over time. This is spinodal decomposition. The journey: the Cahn–Hilliard equation says each ingredient flows downhill in a double-well energy while total amount is conserved, so ∂c/∂t = ∇²(c³ − c − κ∇²c). Two GPU passes per step — one for the chemical potential, one to move material along its gradient — on a 224on a 260² gridsup2; grid.