Approximately 66 million years ago, a 10-km asteroid struck our planet near Chicxulub on the Yucatán Peninsula. The impact was globally catastrophic, causing tsunamis, wildfires, earthquakes, and so much atmosphere-clogging Keep reading
Sandsculpting Bees
Building sandcastles is more than a pastime for the bumblebee-mimic digger bee. This species of bee collects water into an abdominal pouch, then uses it to wet sand to help Keep reading
Candy Clouds Mid-Storm
There’s nothing quite like a towering storm cloud to showcase nature’s power. This gorgeous photo by Laura Rowe shows pastel clouds over West Texas in the middle of a thunderstorm. Keep reading
Hydrodynamic Spin Lattices
Droplets bouncing on a fluid bath display some strikingly quantum-like behaviors thanks to the interactions between a drop and its guiding surface wave. Here, researchers use submerged wells beneath the Keep reading
Breaking Up Is(n’t) Hard to Do
Engineers often need to break a liquid jet up into droplets. To do so quickly, they surround the jet with a ring of fast-moving air in a set-up known as Keep reading
Keeping Cool in the Cretaceous
I love that fluid dynamics can bring new insights to other subjects, like this study on how heavily-armored ankylosaurs avoided heat stroke. Scans of ankylosaur skulls show a complicated, twisty Keep reading
Flying Out of the Water
Flying fish and diving birds often navigate the interface between water and air in their flight, but few studies have actually looked at the effects of this transition on lift. Keep reading
“Kármán Vortex Street”
Although engineers often consider fluid mechanics through the lens of mathematics, that’s far from the only way to understand fluid physics. Today’s video is an alternative interpretation of a classic Keep reading
Moths in Flight
As student engineers, we often use fixed-wing aircraft to build our intuition for flight, but nature has so many other incredible examples to offer. Here we see high-speed video of Keep reading
Microjets and Needle-Free Injection
Some people don’t mind needles, and others absolutely detest them. But to replace needles with needle-free injections, we have to understand how high-speed microjets pass through skin. Given skin’s opacity, Keep reading