This video offers an artistic look at a soap bubble bursting. The process is captured with high-speed video combined with schlieren photography, a technique that makes visible subtle density variations Keep reading
Month: July 2025
Non-Newtonian Effects in Magma Flows
As magma approaches the surface, it forces its way through new and existing fractures in the crust, forming dikes. When a volcano finally erupts, the magma’s viscosity is a major Keep reading
The Hidden Beauty in the Mundane
Physicist Sidney Nagel has spent his career on topics that are somewhat unexpected: how coffee stains form, how droplets splash — or don’t, and how fluid flows into viscous fingers. Keep reading
Whale Migration Carries Nutrients
When it comes to the movement of nutrients in the ocean, we think of run-off from rivers, upwelling along coasts, and convective currents. We don’t typically think about animal migrations, Keep reading
Bigger Particles Slide Farther
Mudslides and avalanches typically carry debris of many shapes and sizes. To understand how debris size affects flows like these, researchers use simplified, laboratory-scale experiments like this one. Here, researchers Keep reading
“Now I See – The Collection Vol. 1”
On the heels of his behind-the-scenes introduction, here’s the first volume of artist Roman De Giuli’s “Now I See”. In it, we appear to soar above vast colorful landscapes. Rivers Keep reading
Tracking Insects in Flight
Insects are masters of a challenging flight regime; their agility, stability, and control far outstrip anything we’ve built at their size. But to even understand how they accomplish this, researchers Keep reading
Fractal Fingers
As bizarre as the branching fractal fingers of the Saffman-Taylor instability look, they’re quite a common phenomenon. In his video, Steve Mould demonstrates how to make them by sandwiching a Keep reading
Pour-Over Physics
Fluids labs are filled with many a coffee drinker, and even those (like me) who don’t enjoy coffee, can find plenty of fascinating physics in their labmates’ mugs. Espresso has Keep reading
Interstellar Jets
This JWST image shows a couple of Herbig-Hero objects, seen in infrared. These bright objects form when jets of fast-moving energetic particles are expelled from the poles of a newborn Keep reading