This lovely video from Ruslan Khasanov showcases the beautiful interplay of surface tension, diffusion, and immiscibility in common fluids. With soy sauce, oil, ink, soap, and a little gasoline, he Keep reading
Month: February 2025
Why Honeycomb is Hexagonal
The regular hexagonal structure of honeycomb may owe more to fluid dynamics than the careful engineering of the bees that build it. Observations indicate that honeycomb cells start out circular Keep reading
Ski Jumping Aerodynamics
Last summer we featured fluid dynamics in the Summer Olympics and there’s more to come for Sochi. Winter athletes like ski jumper Sarah Hendrickson are hard at work preparing, which Keep reading
Shocking Instabilities
The Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability occurs when the interface between two fluids of different density is impulsively accelerated – usually by the passage of a shock wave. The image above shows Keep reading
Evaporating Drops
When still drops evaporate from a surface, they do so in several phases, as illustrated in the video above. Initially, the drop forms a spherical cap. At this point the Keep reading
Fluids Round-up – 24 August 2013
Fluids round-up time! Here are your latest fluids links to check out: One of the great fundamental questions of life is, of course: what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen Keep reading
Vortex Street in the Clouds
Most objects are not particularly aerodynamic or streamlined. When air flows over such bluff bodies, they can shed regular vortices from one side and then the other. This periodic shedding Keep reading
Flame Feedback
When a flame is enclosed in a combustion chamber, it can create violent oscillations in the pressure field. Flames have a natural unsteadiness in their heat release. These temperature fluctuations Keep reading
Breaking Waves
Most beach-goers have probably wondered just what makes the waves coming in to shore rear up and break. The secret lies in the depths–or rather the lack thereof–beneath the waves. Keep reading
Streamlines in Oil
Bernoulli’s principle describes the relationship between pressure and velocity in a fluid: in short, an increase in velocity is accompanied by a drop in pressure and vice versa. This photo Keep reading