Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Signs of Spring
Nothing says, “Goodbye, winter!” quite like watching the ice disappear after a deep freeze. This timelapse video shows ice on Lake Michigan breaking up after a deep freeze. The first chunk to go is a massive plate of ice that moves off in a single large chunk. After that, the break-up takes place on a…
Viscoelastic Coiling
Drizzle honey or syrup from high enough, and you’ll see it coil like a liquid rope. This feature of viscous fluids also extends to polymer-filled viscoelastic fluids. But recent work shows that the elasticity of these fluids delays the onset of coiling; put differently, if you pour two fluids of comparable viscosity, the viscoelastic one…
Kelvin Wakes
Whether you’re watching ducks cruise by on a pond or a boat making its way across the ocean, you’ve probably noticed a distinctive V-shaped wake. This shape is known as a Kelvin wake, and it forms because waves in water don’t all move at the same speed. Instead, the speed a wave travels at depends…
Sea Swirls by the Shore
Water and sediments swirl in these enhanced satellite photos of China’s Leizhou Peninsula. Color-filtering algorithms have drawn out the details of the flows, but the patterns themselves are real. Tides, currents, sediment, and human activity combine to form these complex flows along the peninsula’s shores. The straight parallel lines seen off Liusha Bay, for example,…
Iceberg Melting Depends on Shape
Not all icebergs melt equally. Through a combination of experiment and numerical simulation, researchers have shown that an iceberg’s shape underwater strongly affects how it melts. Specifically, icebergs in a flow melt more quickly on the front and side surfaces and slower on the underside. This means that narrow icebergs that project deep into the…
Lava and Life
Kilauea’s 2018 eruption gave us some of the most stunning volcanic footage ever seen, a tradition carried on in this BBC footage. As powerful and destructive as lava is, it’s also critical to life as we know it here on Earth. Volcanoes are a piece of the tectonic activity on our planet that drives the…
Inside Hydroplaning
When a tire spins over a wet roadway, pressure at the front of the tire generates a lifting force; if that lift exceeds the weight of the car, it will start hydroplaning. To prevent this, the grooves of a tire’s tread are designed to redirect the water. Now researchers have visualized flow inside these grooves…
Planes Lift
Need a little refresher on how airplanes fly? The middle school students of The Nueva School have you covered with their latest science rap parody. They take a look at the four main forces on a flying airplane and even dig a little bit into the principles behind lift generation. Check it out! (Video and…
“Geodaehan”
In “Geodaehan” Roman De Giuli’s macro fluid art mimics massive landscapes. The film takes us over deltas, rivers, glaciers, and landslides. Some look like earthbound locations, others look like something from Mars or Titan. All are, in fact, paint, ink, and glitter on paper! It’s truly incredible how artists capture large-scale fluid physics on such…
A Macro View of Weathering
Water constantly weathers sedimentary rock, both physically — through abrasion — and chemically — through dissolution and recrystallization. Now researchers have gotten their first view of this weathering at the Ångstrom level by observing porous rocks with environmental transmission electron microscopy as they interact with both water vapor and liquid water. As expected, the experiments…