A buoyant plume of smoke rises from a stick of incense. At first the plume is smooth and laminar, but even in quiescent air, tiny perturbations can sneak into the Keep reading
Month: January 2025
The Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability in the Lab
Though often spotted in water waves or clouds, the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is easily demonstrated in the lab as well. Here a tank with two layers of liquid – fresh water Keep reading
Turning Sound into Light
Sonoluminescence – the creation of light from sound – was discovered in the 1930s, and, due to the difficulty of obtaining direct measurements, the exact mechanism remains highly debated even Keep reading
The Kaye Effect
When a viscous fluid falls onto a surface, it will form a heap, like honey coiling. But for shear-thinning liquids like soap or shampoo something a little wild can happen Keep reading
Bubble Lenses
In this video, artist Jesse Zanzinger experiments with the lens-like refractive properties of bubbles. Though focused on the bending of light, there’s plenty here in terms of coalescence, surface tension, Keep reading
Fluids Round-up – 25 May 2013
Sometimes I come across cool links and stories about fluid dynamics that don’t quite fit into a typical FYFD post, but I’d like to start sharing those semi-regularly with round-up Keep reading
Turbulence and Magnetic Field Lines
During a solar flare, magnetic field lines on the sun are often visible due to the flow of plasma–charged particles–along the lines. According to theory, these magnetic lines should remain Keep reading
Breaking into Droplets
A falling column of liquid, like the water from your faucet, will tend to break up into a series of droplets due to the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. This instability is driven Keep reading
Bouncing on a Pool
There’s something wonderfully serene about watching water droplets skate their way across the surface of a pool. Here the pool of water is being vibrated at a frequency just below Keep reading
Effects of Hills on Flow
Hills and other topology can have interesting and complex effects on a flowfield. With the FAITH experiment, NASA has been investigating an axisymmetric model hill using a combination of experimental Keep reading