Droplet impacts on granular surfaces and water interactions with superhydrophobic surfaces are not unfamiliar topics for FYFD. But this behavior of water droplets falling on a superhydrophobic powder is unusual, Keep reading
Month: May 2023
Reader Question: Dry Rear Windshields in the Rain
Reader sheepnamedpig asks: I was driving through the rain down the highway when I noticed something strange: though the rain was heavy enough to reduce visibility to a quarter mile, Keep reading
Simulating Floods
Last week officials opened the Glen Canyon Dam’s bypass tubes to release a simulated flood on the Colorado River, which runs through the Grand Canyon. This is the first of Keep reading
Superfluid Vortices
Cooling helium to a few degrees Kelvin above absolute zero produces superfluid helium, a substance with some very bizarre behaviors caused by a lack of viscosity. Superfluids exhibit quantum mechanical Keep reading
Sharkskin’s Secrets
Sharks are known as extremely fast and agile swimmers, due in part to the surface of their skin. Sharks are covered in very tiny tooth-shaped scales called denticles which are Keep reading
Self-Healing Soap Films
Some soap films are capable of self-healing after a solid object passes through them, as shown in the video above. The behavior is primarily dependent on Weber number–a nondimensional ratio Keep reading
“Kusho”
Artist Shinichi Maruyama uses photography to freeze the transient motion of fluids into water sculptures. Inertia, gravity, and surface tension are at war in each piece. Plateau-Rayleigh instabilities break long Keep reading
Grooving Bubbles
Here bubbles in a microchannel are subjected to an external ultrasonic acoustic field. Under the influence of this vibration, the bubbles self-organize into crystal-like structures with a fixed finite separation Keep reading
Microbubble Necklace
When a drop impacts a pool at very low velocity, a thin layer of air can be trapped between the drop and the pool. When this air film ruptures, a Keep reading
Leidenfrost Explosions
When a drop of water touches a very hot pan, it will skitter across the surface on a thin layer of water vapor due to the Leidenfrost effect. But what Keep reading