Oobleck, a non-Newtonian fluid made up of water and cornstarch, is a perennial Internet favorite for its ability to dance and the fact that one can run across a pool Keep reading
Month: January 2025
How Erosion Shapes a Flow
Erosion creates all manner of strange shapes as wind and water cut away at solids. But why does the interaction of the fluid and solid result in the geometries we observe? Keep reading
How Fast Do Holes Grow?
Taylor and Culick predicted a constant velocity for the rim of an opening hole in a soap film of uniform thickness. Unfortunately, it is difficult to experimentally produce a soap Keep reading
Floating Water Bridges
Water bridges that seem to float on air are an electrohydrodynamic phenomenon. By filling two beakers with extremely pure deionized water and applying a large voltage across them, flow is Keep reading
The Vortex Under a Falling Drop
We take for granted that drops which impact a solid surface will splash, but, in fact, drops only splash when the surrounding air pressure is high enough. When the air Keep reading
Marangoni Flows
Differences in surface tension cause fluid motion through the Marangoni effect. Because an area with higher surface tension pulls more strongly on nearby liquid than an area of low surface Keep reading
Mixing Flows
Turbulence is an excellent mixer. Here two fluorescent dyes are injected into a turbulent water jet. Flow is from the bottom of the image toward the top. The dyes are Keep reading
Fluid Sculptures From Bursting Bubbles
A bubble initiated near a free surface–like the air-water interface here–can generate some spectacular dynamics. Beginning at the far left, the expanding subsurface bubble causes a dome at the surface Keep reading
Explosive Boiling
A superheated liquid can reach temperatures higher than its boiling point without actually boiling – similar to how liquids can be supercooled below their freezing point without solidifying. The photo Keep reading
Fluids Round-up – 20 October 2013
Some very cool fluids applications in this week’s fluids round-up. On to the links! Like many colleges, MIT has campus myths about those unbelievably windy spots. But, unlike many others, Keep reading