The hawk moth (Manduca sexta) flies quite similarly to a hummingbird, able to hover over the flowers from which it feeds by rotating its wings as it flaps. This constant Keep reading
Month: December 2024
Reader Question: How Airfoils Produce Lift
doughboy3-deactivated20120305 asks: I’m a Undergrad Aeronautical Engineering student. I’m curious as to your opinion as to how airfoils produce lift. I know the usual theory told in this situation. However my Keep reading
Reader Question: How to Get Started in Fluid Dynamics
unboundid-deactivated20131116 asks: Hi. I’m a freshman engineering student at UCSD, and I was hoping to get more into fluid dynamics. Could you possibly give a quick shake-down of what I should Keep reading
Supersonic Stellar Jets
Astronomers studying stellar jets–massive outflows of gases and particles pouring from the poles of newborn stars–are finding reasons to turn to fluid dynamicists to understand the timelapse videos they’ve stitched Keep reading
“Tidal Wave” vs. “Tsunami”
This is part of the trouble when the same term has a scientific meaning and a lay meaning. See also: fluid.
Colliding Jets
Two jets of sugar syrup collide and interact to form very different patterns. On the left, the two jets have a low flow rate and create a chain-like wake. The Keep reading
Vortex Ring Collision
Two vortex rings collide head-on in this video. If their vorticities and velocities are matched in magnitude and opposite in direction, their collision results in a stagnation plane–essentially a wall Keep reading
Ejecting Drops
Large droplets ejected from a liquid pool do not coalesce immediately back into the whole. Instead, a thin layer of air gets trapped beneath them, much like the oil lubricating Keep reading
Freezing in a Microchannel
Fluid mechanics at the microscale can behave quite differently than in our everyday experience. Microfluidic devices–sometimes known as labs on a chip–are becoming increasingly important in research and daily life. Keep reading
How Shock Waves Form
Most people are familiar with the Doppler effect–in which the frequency of a wave changes depending on the motion of the observer relative to the wave source–from the shifting pitch Keep reading