Flow patterns can change dramatically as fluid speed and Reynolds number increase. These visualizations show flow moving from left to right around a circular plunger. The lower Reynolds number flow Keep reading
Month: April 2025
“Becoming Harmonious”
Much as I try to keep from getting repetitious, this was just too neat to pass up. This new music video for The Glitch Mob’s “Becoming Harmonious” is built around Keep reading
Tiny Fliers
There’s an apocryphal story claiming that, aerodynamically speaking, honeybees should not be able to fly. Obviously, they can, but it’s true that a small, flapping creature and a large, fixed-wing Keep reading
What Sound Looks Like
NPR’s Skunk Bear Tumblr has a great new video on the schlieren visualization technique. The schlieren optical set-up is relatively simple but very powerful, as shown in the video. The technique Keep reading
Wingtip Vortices
Newton’s third law says that forces come in equal and opposite pairs. This means that when air exerts lift on an airplane, the airplane also exerts a downward force on Keep reading
“High Ball Stepper”
The recently released music video for Jack White’s “High Ball Stepper” is a fantastic marriage of science and art. The audio is paired with visuals based around vibration effects using Keep reading
Kelvin Wakes
Ducks, boats, and other objects moving along water create a distinctive V-shaped pattern known as a Kelvin wake. As the boat moves, it creates disturbance waves of many different wavelengths. Keep reading
How Tsunamis Cross the Ocean
Last week an earthquake in Chile raised concerns over a possible tsunami in the Pacific. This animation shows a simulation of how waves would spread from the quake’s epicenter over Keep reading
Coalescence
The coalescence of two liquid droplets takes less than the blink of an eye, but it is the result of an intricate interplay between surface tension, viscosity, and inertia. The Keep reading
Reader Question: Lagrangian Vs. Eulerian
Reader isotropicposts writes: Hi, I’m taking a fluids class and I’m not sure I understand the whole lagrangian-eulerian measurements of velocity and acceleration. Could you explain this? This is a Keep reading