Joint popping is one of those things some people revel in and others detest. What you may not have realized, though, is that fluid dynamics are responsible for the sound. Keep reading
Month: January 2025
Reader Question: Winglets
Reader tvargo writes: First off… love your blog! I know very little about physics, but love reading about it. Could you potentially explain what the little upturned ends of wings Keep reading
The Real Shape of Raindrops
We often think of raindrops as spherical or tear-shaped, but, in reality, a falling droplet’s shape can be much more complicated. Large drops are likely to break up into smaller Keep reading
Rotational Effects
Rotation can cause non-intuitive effects in fluid dynamical systems. UCLA Spinlab’s newest video tackles the problem using four demonstrations. The first two deal with droplets released in air, first in Keep reading
4th Birthday: Mantis Shrimp
Undoubtedly one of the most mind-boggling instances of fluid dynamics I’ve learned about in writing FYFD is that of sonoluminescence – an effect in which light is produced from imploding Keep reading
Nautilus Article
Spend an hour watching the clouds roll overhead and no two of them will be the same. The complexity and dynamic motion of turbulence make these flows fascinating, even mesmerizing, Keep reading
4th Birthday: Rogue Waves
Rogue waves—individual, isolated waves far larger than the surrounding waves—were reported for centuries by sailors. But their stories of massive walls of water appearing in the open ocean were not Keep reading
4th Birthday: The Kaye Effect
Today’s post continues my retrospective on mind-boggling fluid dynamics in honor of FYFD’s birthday. This video on the Kaye effect was one of the earliest submissions I ever received–if you’re Keep reading
4th Birthday: Wingtip Vortices
Wingtip vortices are a result of the finite length of a wing. Airplanes generate lift by having low-pressure air travelling over the top of the wing and higher pressure air Keep reading
4th Birthday: Intro
Next week marks FYFD’s 4th birthday! It’s hard to believe that it’s been so long, or that the blog and I have come so far. I set out with the Keep reading