Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Jovian Poles
NASA’s Juno mission has been revealing a side of Jupiter we’ve never seen before. We all recognize the familiar stripes of the planet’s cloud bands, but its poles are entirely different. Unlike Saturn with its hexagonal polar vortex, Jupiter’s poles are a swirling tapestry of turbulent vortices – full of features that citizen scientists are…
Water Bottle Flipping Physics
Water bottle flipping has become quite the craze, and in a recent video The Backyard Scientist presented his own take on the subject, testing whether you could flip a bottle with mercury rather than water. As it turns out, fluid dynamicists have studied this topic, too, by dropping partially-filled elastic spheres containing water, isopropyl alcohol,…
Laser Goggles for Parrotlets
Many experimental techniques in fluid dynamics use lasers. One such technique, particle image velocimetry (PIV), introduces tiny particles into the flow and uses a laser to illuminate the particles. By taking pictures in rapid succession and comparing them, researchers can measure the velocity in different parts of the flow. This technique is incredibly powerful but…
Linear Dunes
The Namib desert of southern Africa is home to some of the most stunning dunes on Earth. They are primarily linear dunes, which form parallel to the winds that form them. On the left side of the image, the dunes are aligned north-to-south along the direction of the southerly winds that blow through this area.…
Liquid Fragmentation
From spilling coffee to driving through puddles, our daily lives are full of examples of liquids fragmenting into drops. A recently published study describes how this break-up occurs and predicts what the distribution of droplet sizes will be for a given fluid. Viscoelasticity is the property that governs this droplet size distribution. Viscoelasticity describes two…
Mixing Fresh and Salty
Earth’s oceans are a complex and dynamic environment, but fortunately, we can simulate some of their physics on a smaller scale in the laboratory. The time series of images above show how fresh and salty waters mix. On the right side of the image is fresh water with its top layer dyed green. On the…
“Chemical Poetry”
In “Chemical Poetry” artists Roman Hill and Paul Mignot use fluid dynamics to create incredible and engaging visuals. With a stunningly close eye to fluids mixing and chemicals reacting, their imagery feels like gazing on primordial acts of creation or destruction. There’s even a sequence that feels like you’re watching an explosion in slow-motion, but…
Meandering Colorado
Sometimes the meandering of a river is best seen from above. Because of the way water moves to negotiate a bend in the river, any curvature of a river will get carved into a more extreme curve over time. Eventually the river’s course becomes so exaggerated that a loop can bend almost back on itself.…
Buzzing Straws
Many woodwind instruments owe their sound to the vibration caused when air moves past parts of them. As Nick Moore demonstrates in this video, you can create a simple version of this effect with a slit drinking straw. The buzzing the straw produces when air passes through is a sort of aeroelasticity – it’s a…
Molasses Flood Press
My Molasses Flood project has gotten a bunch of press since my presentation earlier this week, including in the New York Times, the Associated Press, New Scientist, and on CBC’s “As It Happens”. There’s more links to recent articles on the revamped About page – I’ll continue filling out the “FYFD in the News” section sometime…