Earlier this year, the Capillary Beverage experiment launched to the International Space Station with new open-topped “Space Cups” for astronauts to test. Now those of us back on Earth are Keep reading
Month: March 2025
The Fluidic Oscillator
A fluidic oscillator is a device with no moving parts that sprays a fluid from side to side. The animations above illustrate how they work. A nozzle funnels a fluid Keep reading
Fire Tornado
Fire tornadoes, despite their name, are more like dust devils than your typical tornado. In nature, they’ll often form in wildfires, but here the Slow Mo Guys simulate one for Keep reading
Draining Soap Film
The brilliant colors of a soap film are directly related to the film’s thickness. Black regions, like the one in the upper right of this image, are the thinnest regions Keep reading
APS DFD 2015
Heads-up for those coming to Boston for APS DFD 2015. I’m giving a talk about FYFD and outreach Sunday evening at 5:16pm in Room 102. I’ll also be around the Keep reading
Oil Film on Water
This award-winning short film features a thin layer of volatile oil on water. The oil evaporates quickest from shallow pools only microns deep, which appear bluish in the video. Surface Keep reading
Jovian Belts and Zones
Jupiter’s colorful cloud bands alternate between dark belts and light zones. The bands mark convection cells in Jupiter’s atmosphere, and, like on Earth, powerful jet streams form due to this Keep reading
From Dripping to Beading
When water drips, it quickly breaks up into a string of smaller droplets due to a surface-tension-driven instability called the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. But adding just a tiny bit of polymer Keep reading
Trampolining Droplet
Imagine a droplet sitting on a rigid surface spontaneously bouncing up and then continuing to bounce higher after each impact, as if it were on a trampoline. It sounds impossible, Keep reading
Science Hackathon
Just a heads-up that I’ll be at Brown University tomorrow giving a talk and then helping out with a science visualization hackathon. I’m super excited for the opportunity to have Keep reading