Droplets of paint whirl to Chopin’s “Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2” in this short film from artist Thomas Blanchard. The glitter particles in the paints act as seed particles that Keep reading
Month: March 2025
Inside a Zebrafish Heart
This glimpse inside a 5-day-old zebrafish’s heart shows why they’re often used as a model organism in cardiac studies. The fish’s heart rate is similar to humans and its two-chamber Keep reading
Granular Gaps
Push air into a gap filled with a viscous fluid, and you’ll get the branching, dendritic pattern of a Saffman-Taylor instability. Here, researchers use a similar set-up: injection into a Keep reading
Test Firing a Rocket Engine
Watching a rocket engine start up in slow motion is always fun. This Slow Mo Guys video shows a test fire of one of Firefly’s engines, which is capable of Keep reading
The Jumping Jump
Turn on your kitchen sink, and the falling jet may form a circle of shallow flow where it strikes the sink. This fast-moving region of flow, surrounded by a wall Keep reading
“Emerald Roots”
As charged particles from the solar wind bombard the upper atmosphere, a glowing plasma forms and dances in the sky. The green light of the plasma reflects off moistened sand, Keep reading
Swedish Egg Coffee
In the mid-1800s, Scandinavian immigrants settling in the Midwest had no filters, no percolators, and no drip coffee makers to aid their quest for a cup of coffee. Instead, they Keep reading
Turbulent Thermal Convection
In the winter, warm air rises from our floor vents or radiators, creating a complex, invisible flow in the background of our lives. Buoyancy lifts warmer air upward while cooler, Keep reading
A Working Wirtz Pump
In the mid-eighteenth century, pewterer Andreas Wirtz invented a spiral pump. Even today, his design is useful for small-scale, low-power pumping, as seen in this Steve Mould video. The design Keep reading
Enhancing the Cheerios Effect
The Cheerios in your morning cereal clump together with one another and the bowl’s wall due to an attractive force caused by the curvature of their menisci. A recent study Keep reading