Hi, folks! As the social media landscape fractured, I’ve been dragging my feet about making some needed changes. But no longer. As of November 2024, I am no longer updating Keep reading
“The Ballet of Colors”
Thomas Blanchard’s short film “The Ballet of Colors” plunges viewers into a warm spectrum of roiling oil and paint. Fluid dynamically speaking, it could be subtitled “the Plateau-Rayleigh instability” thanks Keep reading
Filtering by Sea Sponge
Gathering oil after a spill is fiendishly difficult. Deploying booms to corral and soak up oil at the water surface only catches a fraction of the spill. A recent study Keep reading
Salt Affects Particle Spreading
Microplastics are proliferating in our oceans (and everywhere else). This video takes a look at how salt and salinity gradients could affect the way plastics move. The researchers begin with Keep reading
Derecho-Induced Skyscraper Damage
Derechos are short-lived, intense wind storms sometimes associated with thunderstorms. Last spring, such a storm passed through Houston, leaving downtown skyscrapers with more damage than a hurricane with comparable wind Keep reading
Seeing Sound
Sound, vibration, and motion are all inextricably linked. In this BBC video, physicist Helen Czerski shows how an object’s sound and vibrations relate through the classic Chladni experiment. She vibrates Keep reading
“Skimming the Waves”
Common terns are gregarious sea birds that cruise low over the water to fish. When they spot prey, they will dip down to grab a fish from the surface, or Keep reading
Ultra-Soft Solids Flow By Turning Inside Out
Can a solid flow? What would that even look like? Researchers explored these questions with an ultra-soft gel (think 100,000 times softer than a gummy bear) pumped through a ring-shaped Keep reading
Strandbeest Evolution
Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests are massive, wind-powered kinetic sculptures designed to roam Dutch beaches. Conceived in the late 1980s as a way to kick up sand that would replenish nearby dunes, Keep reading
Anti-Icing Polar Bear Fur
Despite spending their lives in and around frigid water, snow, and ice, polar bears are rarely troubled by ice building up on their fur. This natural anti-icing property is one Keep reading
A Drop’s Shape Effects
Falling raindrops get distorted by the air rushing past them, ultimately breaking large droplets into many smaller ones. This research poster shows how variable this process is by showing two Keep reading