Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Storm Eyes and Mushrooms in a Drop
In industry, drying droplets often have many components: a liquid solvent, solid nanoparticles, and dissolved polymers. The concentration of that last component — the polymers — can have a big effect on the way the droplet dries, as seen in the video above. Without polymers, the droplet dries similarly to a coffee ring stain. But…
Granular Fingers
Finger-like shapes often form on fluids injected between glass plates, but what happens when that injected fluid contains particles? That’s the situation in this recent study, where researchers sandwiched a fluid between two glass plates and then injected a second, similar fluid laced with particles. Despite the differences from the traditional Saffman-Taylor set-up, the granular-filled…
Freshwater Mussels
Freshwater bivalves like these California floater mussels are critical species for the health of our waters. And although we don’t think of mussels as being very mobile, they’re actually quite active. As larvae, the mussels get released from their parent bivalve and attach to the fins or gills of a fish. While they develop, they…
Recreating Infinity
In the ocean, tiny organisms can migrate hundreds of meters through the water column. Recreating and tracking those journeys in a lab is quite a challenge, but it’s one the researchers behind the Gravity Machine have conquered. This apparatus uses a wheel to essentially give micro-organisms an infinite water column to traverse while keeping them…
Leidenfrost on Water
When a skillet is hot enough, water droplets will skitter across the surface almost frictionlessly thanks to the Leidenfrost effect. The incredibly high temperature of the surface relative the the liquid’s boiling point causes part of the drop to vaporize, enveloping the remainder of the liquid in a protective vapor cocoon. We see this effect for…
Green Swirls and Dark Streaks
Green phytoplankton blooms swirl through the currents of the Baltic Sea in this satellite image. Individual phytoplankton are microscopic, which makes them excellent tracer particles in the flow; together, they make the ocean’s motion visible. Look closely and you’ll see dark streaks across the images showing where ships’ wakes are disrupting the bloom. (Image credit:…
Landings Beyond Earth
With planning for manned and unmanned missions to the Moon, Mars, and many asteroids underway, engineers are using numerical simulations to understand how spacecraft thrusters interact with planetary surfaces. Most practical data for this problem comes from the Apollo program and is of limited use for current missions. Recreating a Martian landing on Earth isn’t…
Droplets From Speaking
Illnesses like COVID-19 can spread through droplets and aerosols produced by coughing, sneezing, or even speaking. New research looks at how regular speech patterns produce a spray of droplets. Researchers found that pronouncing many consonants causes a sheet of saliva to form between the speaker’s lips. That sheet stretches into filaments that then break into…
Chaos in the Lagoon Nebula
Even on the scale of light-years, fluid dynamics plays a role in our universe. This photograph shows the Lagoon Nebula, where stars, gas, and dust are battling for supremacy. Jets from young stars push the dust left from supernova remnants into a chaotic patterns, and the high-energy particles streaming from the youthful stars illuminate interstellar…