Avalanche dynamics, surface roughening, and self-organized criticality: Experiments on a three-dimensional pile of rice

The results of both the avalanche and the roughening behavior of an experimental self-organized criticality (SOC) system are presented. In addition, simple arguments for universal scaling relations, derived by Paczuski et al. on general grounds, connecting the avalanche and the roughening behavior are presented as well. As such, a quantitative agreement of the experimental exponents characterizing the roughness and those describing the avalanche statistics is obtained