What happens when a foam interacts with a sliding surface? That’s the question at the heart of this study, which finds three major regimes of foam-surface interaction. On smooth surfaces Keep reading
Month: September 2024
Bristling Sharkskin Fights Separation
The speedy shortfin mako shark has a secret weapon to fight drag: bristling denticles that line its fins and tail. Denticles are tiny, anvil-shaped enamel scales on the mako’s skin. Keep reading
Expanding Water Beads
In this timelapse, we see hydrogel beads expanding as they absorb water. There are some interesting subtleties to the physics here. Notice how, in the Petri dish segments, the beads Keep reading
Icy Swirls
Rafts of sea ice follow swirling eddies in this satellite image of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Just as with phytoplankton blooms and sediment, this thin sea ice can be Keep reading
Steering as a Boxfish
Coral reefs are full of odd-looking denizens, but one of the funniest-looking ones must be the boxfish. This family of fish lives up to its name; their bodies feature an Keep reading
Mixing Leidenfrost Drops
When placed on a very hot, patterned surface, droplets will self-propel on a layer of their own vapor. Here, researchers use this to drive droplets to coalesce so that they Keep reading
Choosing Swimming Over Flight
When studying modern birds it quickly becomes apparent that they can either be good at swimming or at flying, but not at both. The characteristics that make wings good for Keep reading
Breaking Up Granular Rafts
Particles at a fluid interface will often gather into a collection known as a granular raft. The geometry of the interface where it meets individual particles, combined with the surface Keep reading
Shock Waves Drive Nova Brightening
New observations of nova V906 Carinae have provided some of the first direct evidence that the observed brightening of these stellar objects is driven by shock waves. Novae form when Keep reading
Cavitation Through Acceleration
Cavitation refers to the formation of destructive bubbles of vapor within a liquid. Traditionally, we think of it as occurring when the velocity in a flow becomes high enough for Keep reading