Every year Chicago dyes part of its river green to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. This timelapse video gives a great view of the 2016 dyeing. If you watch closely, you’ll Keep reading
Month: March 2025
Dancing Droplets
The seemingly-alive dancing droplets are back in a new video from Veritasium. These droplets of food coloring attract, merge, and chase one another due to evaporation and surface tension interactions Keep reading
Prairie Dog Physics
One challenge facing burrowing mammals is ensuring sufficient oxygen within their den. Prairie dogs achieve this with a clever use of Bernoulli’s principle. They build multiple entrances to their tunnels. Keep reading
Pyroclastic Flow
Major volcanic eruptions can be accompanied by pyroclastic flows, a mixture of rock and hot gases capable of burying entire cities, as happened in Pompeii when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in Keep reading
Rogue Wave Recreated
If you look online, the term “rogue wave” gets thrown around a lot – a whole lot. And most of the videos you see of “rogue waves”, “freak waves”, and “monster Keep reading
Fluids Round-up
Last week was supposed to have a fluids round-up, but we were having too much fun walking on water instead. So here it is now! – NASA has asked Congress Keep reading
Molten Salt in Water
In his latest video, The Backyard Scientist explores what happens when molten salt (sodium chloride) gets poured into water. As you can see, the results are quite dramatic! He demonstrates Keep reading
Webcast Teaser Reel
Saturday I topped off a week of water-walking physics by holding a webcast with Professor Tadd Truscott and PhD student Randy Hurd of The Splash Lab. We had an absolutely Keep reading
Turbulent Convection
These golden lines reveal the complexity of turbulent convective flow. They come from a numerical simulation of turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection, a situation in which fluid trapped between two plates is Keep reading
Reader Question: The Flash
Reader pavlovs-dogs asks: About your running on water post, the show didn’t necessarily get it wrong when they said 1050kmph. You did not take into account that he was carrying another Keep reading