Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Simulating Solar Flares
Few topics in fluid dynamics are more mathematically complicated than magnetohydrodynamics – the marriage between electromagnetism and fluids. That mathematical complexity, along with the vast range of scales necessary to describe physical systems like our sun, means that, until now, researchers had to simplify their assumptions when simulating solar physics. But now, for the first…
Liquid Antispiral
Spiral formations are common in nature, from galaxies to chemical reactions. But most examples in nature rotate such that their arms trail the direction of rotation. Viewed side-on, this makes the arms appear to spiral outward from the the center. The opposite – an antispiral, where the arms appear to be drawn in toward the center…
Worthington and His Jets
If you’ve been around fluid mechanics for very long, you’ve probably noticed that we like to name things after people. (Mostly dead, white guys, but that’s another subject.) Whenever someone describes or explains a new phenomenon, it tends to get their name attached to it. Some of the common names in fluid dynamics – Reynolds,…
The Polar Vortex
Every year or two, the Northern Hemisphere gets treated to a bout of intensely cold temperatures thanks to the polar vortex. What you may not realize, though, is that it’s not the polar vortex that causes this cold weather – it’s the vortex breaking down. As Simon Clark explains in this video, the polar vortices…
Dripping Down the Rivulet
If you’ve ever watched water running down the side of the street, you’ve probably noticed that it doesn’t flow smoothly. Instead, you’ll see waves, rivulets, and disturbances that form. That’s because the simple action of flowing down an incline is unstable. Water and other viscous liquids can’t flow downhill smoothly. Any disturbances – an uneven…
Enormous Ice Disk
We’ve seen spinning ice disks before, but this month Westbrook, Maine has developed the largest one I’ve ever seen. A research paper from 2016 indicates that this seemingly alien formation spins due to an oddity of water. Water is at its densest around 4 degrees Celsius, so as the ice of the disk melts in the…
An Inverted Leidenfrost Drop
Leidenfrost drops – liquid drops that levitate on a layer of their own vapor over a hot surface – have been all the rage in recent years. We’ve seen how they can be guided, trapped, and self-propelled. What you see here is a bit different. This is a droplet of room-temperature ethanol deposited on a…
The Boston Molasses Flood
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the Boston Molasses Flood, and to commemorate this bizarre disaster, I’ve made a video about the key findings from my research with colleagues at Harvard University. Check it out below! And, if you’re still hankering to learn more about the Molasses Flood, here are some recent articles and interviews…
Lava Bomb
What you see above is a homemade lava bomb. To systematically study what happens when groundwater meets lava, scientists melted basalt and created their own meter-scale explosion-on-demand. Inside the container, they can inject water and observe the resulting dynamics. Beneath the lava, the water forms what scientists call a domain. Thanks to the Leidenfrost effect,…
“The Empire of C”
Filmmaker Thomas Blanchard has once again released a beautiful, fluid-filled short to captivate us. Built from paint, oil, and liquid soap, “The Empire of C” feels like it gives viewers a birds-eye perspective over a fantastical land. I was particularly drawn to two fluid dynamical aspects of the film. The first were the dendritic sequences in…