When a car drives over a leaf-strewn autumn road, it pulls leaves up with its passage. This tendency to drag fluid along when an object passes is called entrainment, and Keep reading
Month: September 2024
“Halo”
Fluids create mesmerizing practical effects in this new experimental film from the Julia Set Lab. I love how the visuals mess with your sense of scale. Some of the sequences Keep reading
The Assassin’s Teapot
The assassin’s teapot is a cleverly designed container that can pour from different reservoirs depending on how it’s held. Steve Mould digs into the physics in this video, and he Keep reading
Elastic Turbulence
Decades ago, engineers pumping polymer-filled drilling liquids into porous rock noticed sudden and dramatic increases in the viscosity of the liquid. Within the tiny pores of the rock, conventional (i.e., Keep reading
The Yarning Droplet
Marangoni bursting takes place in alcohol-water droplets; as the alcohol evaporates, surface tension changes across the liquid surface, generating a flow that tears the original drop into smaller droplets. Here Keep reading
Viscosity and Quantum Mechanics
Viscosity describes a fluid’s resistance to changing its shape. Like surface tension, it’s a fundamental property of a fluid that comes from the interactions between molecules. But viscosity is a Keep reading
Moody Waves
Lines of waves emerge from thick morning fog in this series by photographer Raf Maes. The eerie, slightly surreal images were captured in Venice, near Los Angeles. So often ocean Keep reading
The Return of the Ice Disk
Maine’s giant, spinning ice disk is taking shape again. In 2019, it reached about 91 meters across, rotating slowly in the Presumpscot River. How exactly these features form is still Keep reading
Laser-Induced Jet Break-Up
A falling stream of water will naturally break up into droplets via the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. Those droplets are random, unless something like vibration of the nozzle sets their size. In Keep reading
Volcanic Shocks
A violent underwater eruption at the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai caldera on January 15th sent literal shock waves around the world. This animation, based on satellite images from Japan’s Himawari 8, Keep reading