Look closely enough at a shark’s skin, and you will find it is covered in tiny, anvil-shaped denticles (lower left). To try and discover how and why these denticles help Keep reading
Month: February 2025
Resonating Bowls
Rub your hands on the handles of a Chinese resonance bowl and you can generate a spray of tiny droplets. The key to this, as the name suggests, is vibration. Keep reading
Rayleigh-Taylor Waves
Here on Earth, placing a denser fluid over a lighter one creates an unstable equilibrium. Thanks to gravity, the heavier, denser fluid wants to sink and the lighter fluid wants Keep reading
Reader Question: Splashes
Reader effjoebiden asks: So is the crown splash the curving wave of water on either side of the tire, the spikes of water in the middle behind the tire, or Keep reading
Sublimation
Sublimation is a transition directly from a solid phase to a gaseous one. Given typical Earth atmospheric conditions, one of the most commonly observed examples of sublimation is that of Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 4
Inside or outside, we encounter a lot of fluid dynamics every day. Here are some examples you might have noticed, especially on a rainy day: Worthington Jets After a drop Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 3
A lot of the fluid dynamics in our daily lives centers around the preparation and consumption of food. (And in its digestion afterward, but that’s another story!) Here are a Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 2
We play with fluid dynamics all the time, though we don’t always think of it as such. Here are a few ways it shows up in the ways we play: Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 1
Just getting cleaned up and ready for the day involves a lot of fluid physics. Here are a few of the phenomena you may see daily without realizing: Plateau-Rayleigh Instability Keep reading
A Day in the Life of a Fluid Dynamicist
Today I’m sharing one of my favorite videos from last year’s Gallery of Fluid Motion. It’s a short film entitled “A Day in the Life of a Fluid Dynamicist.” Although Keep reading