Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
“Haboob”
Mike Olbinski’s latest storm chasing timelapse, “Monsoon V,” is once again spectacular. Although I do think the name could have been “Haboob” instead, given how many sweeping dust clouds encroach on the viewer. These towering wall clouds of dust can form from downdrafts at the leading edge of a cold front, or from the fading remains of…
Fire Tornado in a Bubble
File this one under awesome tricks you shouldn’t try at home. Here bubble artist Dustin Skye demonstrates his handheld inverted fire tornado. First, he blows a large encapsulating bubble, then blows butane and smoke into a smaller secondary bubble. When he breaks the wall between the two, the mixture swirls into the larger bubble. Then,…
“Winter’s Magic”
Don Komarechka’s beautiful short film, “Winter’s Magic,” captures the beauty of soap bubbles as they freeze. It’s a delicate process and one difficult to capture in video. The bubble freezes first at the bottom, where it touches the cold surface – in this case, snow. That freezing releases latent heat and creates a temperature gradient along…
Understanding Jupiter
The swirling clouds of Jupiter hide a complicated and mysterious interior. For decades, scientists have worked to puzzle out the inner dynamics of Jupiter’s atmosphere and what could be going on inside it to generate the flows we see visibly. Near Jupiter’s equator, we see strong jets that flow either east or west, depending on…
A Groovy Hovercraft
Not long ago, researchers discovered that droplets hovering over a hot grooved surface would self-propel. The extension to this was to investigate a hovercraft on a grooved, porous surface (top half of animation)–think an air hockey table with grooves. In that case, air inside the grooves flows from the point toward the edges, and it…
Inside a Heart
You may not give it much thought, but there is important fluid dynamics happening inside you every moment of every day, especially inside your heart. Of the four chambers of the heart, the left ventricle has the thickest walls, reflecting its important task: pumping oxygenated blood throughout the body. In a healthy heart (top of…
A Musical Splatter
High-speed video is wonderful for appreciating fluid motion in ways we can’t on our own. In this video from Warped Perception, we see what happens when a vibrating tuning fork is lowered into water. The tines of the tuning fork create a spray of tiny droplets, reminiscent of what happens in ultrasonic atomization or when blowing…
Fighting a Viscous World
Vaucheria is a genus of yellow-green algae (think pond scum), and some species within this genus reproduce asexually by releasing zoospores. Once mature, the zoospore has to squeeze out of a narrow, hollow filament in order to escape into the surrounding fluid (top). To do so, it uses tiny hair-like flagella on its surface. Despite the…
A Golden Swirl
As much as I love exploring flashy examples of fluid dynamics, like shock waves around aircraft or what happens when non-Newtonain fluids get crushed by a hydraulic press, my favorite moments are the simple, everyday ones. Getting to see fluid dynamics in my daily life, whether I’m standing in the kitchen cooking or trying to wash…