Many fungi use coalescing water droplets to launch and spread their spores. The process is recreated in the laboratory in the animation above. Initially, there is a small spherical drop Keep reading
Month: November 2023
The Hydraulics Behind a Tuna’s Turns
Tuna are remarkably agile for their size. Many species reach lengths exceeding the height of a human adult, yet they can still make tight turns, especially when hunting. A recent Keep reading
Watching Flow Inside Rock
Flow through porous substances has been a major interest in fluid dynamics for the last hundred years because rocks are porous. For most of that period, we’ve used Darcy’s law Keep reading
Flow Around a Cylinder
A cylinder standing upright in a flow creates a complicated system of vortices and recirculation. In the photo above, the flow is left to right. The cylinder itself is somewhat Keep reading
Burning a Rocket Underwater
In a recent video, Warped Perception filmed a model rocket engine firing underwater. Firstly, it’s no surprise that the engine would still operate underwater (after its wax waterproofing). The solid propellant Keep reading
The Elastic Leidenfrost Effect
Drop some hydrogel beads in a hot frying pan and they’ll bounce, hiss, and screech. Normally, if you drop a ball, it bounces to ever smaller heights until it comes Keep reading
Impressionist Gibraltar
Swirls of phytoplankton make this satellite image of Gibraltar look like an Impressionist painting. The photo is a composite of data from several instruments, with colors enhanced to highlight features Keep reading
Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability
Sixty Symbols has a great new video explaining the laboratory set-up for demoing a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. You can see a close-up from the demo above. Here the pink liquid is Keep reading
How Smoke Rings Work
Vortices are a ubiquitous part of life, whether they’re draining down your bathtub or propelling underwater robots. In the latest video from the Lib Lab project, you can learn about Keep reading
Hagfish Crash
Last week a flatbed truck in Oregon overturned and released 3400 kilograms of live hagfish on the highway and nearby cars. Hagfish are eel-like fish known for their impressive slime Keep reading