Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
“Fractal”
Timelapses are a wonderful way to capture the power and majesty of storms like the supercell thunderstorms featured in Chad Cowan’s “Fractal”. The video contains snapshots from six years’ worth of storms over the US’s Great Plains. The highlights include some spectacular mammatus clouds (0:30) and excellent billowing cloud formation (1:27) with turbulence every bit…
Schooling in Soap Films
In sports, flocks of birds, and schools of fish, we’re accustomed to thinking that the followers get an aerodynamic or hydrodynamic advantage over the leaders, but this may not always be the case. Here are two flags placed one after another in a soap film flowing from top to bottom. The flags are passive, meaning…
How Cycling Position Affects Aerodynamics
New FYFD video! How much does a rider’s position on the bike affect the drag they experience? To find out I teamed up with folks from the University of Colorado at Boulder and at SimScale to explore this topic using high-speed video, flow visualization, and computational fluid dynamics. Check out the full video below, and…
Watching Radiation
We’re used to radiation being invisible. With a Geiger counter, it gets turned into audible clicks. What you see above, though, is radiation’s effects made visible in a cloud chamber. In the center hangs a chunk of radioactive uranium, spitting out alpha and beta particles. The chamber also has a reservoir of alcohol and a…
Glacial Remains
The high walls of this alpine canyon were cut by flowing glacial ice. This type of amphitheater-shaped valley is known as a cirque. The photo shows one of the Chicago Lakes on Mount Evans in the Colorado Rockies. The glacier that once sat here carved the steep walls you see in the background but also hollowed out…
Tendrils of Fog
Fog snakes its way from the ocean into the Strait of Juan de Fuca in this animation constructed from satellite imagery. The strait lies between Vancouver Island and the Olympic Peninsula in the Pacific Northwest. Fogs like this form when skies are clearer and heat from the surface is able to escape upward. The surface…
Cavitating
Cavitation happens when the local pressure in a liquid drops below its vapor pressure. A low-pressure bubble forms, typically very briefly, when this occurs. These bubbles are spherical unless they form near a surface. In that case, the bubbles take on a flatter, oblong shape. As they collapse, the bubbles form a jet, like the…
“Galaxy Gates”
Viewing fluids through a macro lens makes for an incredible playground. In “Galaxy Gates”, Thomas Blanchard and the artists of Oilhack explore a colorful and dynamic landscape of paint, oil, and glitter. The nucleation of holes and the breakdown of sheets to filaments and droplets plays a major role in the visuals. The surface layer…
Flow in a Turbine
Fluid flows are complex, complicated, and ever-changing. Researchers use many techniques to visualize parts of a flow, which can help make what’s happening clearer. One technique, shown above, uses oil and dye to visualize flow at the surface. The vertical, black, airfoil-shaped pieces are stators, stationary parts within a turbine that help direct flow. After…
Venturi Splashes
Diving can generate some remarkable splashes. Here researchers explore the splashes from a wedge-shaped impactor. At high speeds, they found that the splash sheet pushed out by the wedge curls back on itself and accelerates sharply downward to “slap” the water surface (top). Studying the air flow around the splash sheet reveals some of the…