In a gravitational field, the pressure in a fluid increases with depth. You can consider it due to the weight of the fluid above. Outside of scuba diving or hiking Keep reading
Month: March 2020
Saturn’s Great White Spot
We’ve touched a couple times on Saturnian storms, but this NASA video gives a great overview of the Great White Spot, a storm that appeared in late 2010. Gauging the Keep reading
Lava in Action
We’ve touched on volcanoes and the fluid dynamics of lava a couple of times here at FYFD, but over at Wired volcanologist Erik Klemetti has some wonderful photos and videos he took Keep reading
Colorful Spirals
Artist Fabian Oefner captures these colorful portraits of fluid instability by dripping acrylic paints onto a metal rod, which is connected to a drill. When the drill is switched on, Keep reading
Mixing the Southern Ocean
Motion in the ocean is driven by many factors, including temperature, salinity, geography, and atmospheric interactions. While global currents dictate much of the large-scale motion, it’s sometimes the smaller scales Keep reading
Lift on a Paper Plane
In this still image from a student experiment, smoke visualization shows the formation of a vortex over the wing of a paper airplane during a wind tunnel test. This wing Keep reading
Mixing While Laminar
Although turbulent flows are known for their mixing efficiency, in manufacturing there can often be a need to mix laminar fluid streams without the increased shear stress of a turbulent Keep reading
The Boundary Layer Visualized
Any time there is relative motion between a solid and a fluid, a small region near the surface will see a large change in velocity. This region, shown with smoke Keep reading
Under the Waves
When I was a kid, I liked to dive underwater in the pool and sit at the bottom, looking up at the peculiar dancing sky the water made overhead. Photographer Keep reading
Frozen Methane Bubbles
As the Arctic warms, methane that was previously trapped by permafrost rises from the muddy bottom of lakes to escape into the atmosphere. Here the first clear ice of the Keep reading