Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Urban Centers During Hurricanes
As the climate warms, many urban centers are facing stronger and more frequent storms. Some, like New York City, are using numerical simulations to better understand the interactions of their complicated urban geometries with hurricane force winds. Above you see a simulation showing predicted wind speeds in a Lower Eastside neighborhood. The incoming wind speed (from the…
Transporting Droplets
Transporting droplets easily and reliably is important in many microfluidic applications. While this can be done using electric fields, those fields can impact biological characteristics researchers are trying to measure. As an alternative, a group of researchers have developed the concept of “mechanowetting,” a technique that uses surface tension forces to hold droplets on a traveling wave. Now…
Oil-on-Water Impact
Although many people have studied droplet impacts over the years, there’s been remarkably little work done with oil-on-water impacts. One of the things that makes this situation different is that the oil and water are completely immiscible, which means we can see aspects of the impact process that are invisible with, say, water-on-water impacts. The animation above shows…
Ink Explosion
Sometimes beautiful flows come from simple combinations. Here the artists of Chemical Bouillon combine ink and hydrocarbons to create lovely explosions of color. Eschewing quick cuts between views, they allow us to linger and explore the flow ourselves as it changes. Differences in surface tension drive streaming flows along the surface, but there seem to be some…
Artificial Microswimmers
In a 1959 lecture entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, Richard Feynman challenged scientists to create a tiny motor capable of propelling itself. Although artificial microswimmers took several more decades to develop, there are now a dozen or so successful designs being researched. The one shown above swims with no moving parts at…
Experimenting with Speakers
In her ongoing quest to explore natural resonance, Dianna has enlisted some very nice, very expensive speakers to find out just what happens when the bass drops. If you ever wondered what the natural frequency of your eyeballs is, then this one’s for you. If you’re more intrigued by the idea of putting out fires…
Floccing Particles
Adding particles to a viscous fluid can create unexpected complications, thanks to the interplay of fluid and solid interactions. Here we see a dilute mixture of dark spherical particles suspended in a layer of fluid cushioned between the walls of an inner and outer cylinder. Initially, the particles are evenly distributed, but when the inner…
Crepe-Making Physics
If you buy a crêpe from a vendor, chances are that they’ll use a blade like the one above to spread the batter evenly across an immobile griddle. But for those of us making our own crêpes at home, this method is impractical. (After all, who wants to purchase a special griddle and utensil just…
Using Bubbles to Keep Clean
Keeping produce clean of foodborne pathogens is a serious issue, and delicate fruits and vegetables like tomatoes cannot withstand intense procedures like cavitation-based cleaning. But a new study suggests that simple air bubbles may have the power to keep our produce free of germs. In particular, researchers studied air bubbles injected into water as they…
How Spillways Work
Human infrastructure like dams have the challenge of standing up to whatever nature can throw at them. It’s expensive, if not outright impossible, to build to every single contingency, so engineers have developed methods of dealing with problems like excess flow caused by a storm. For dams, one of the ways of dealing with this…