Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
“Vorticity”
Photographer Mike Olbinski is back with another storm-chasing timelapse entitled “Vorticity”. Like his previous work, this film is a breath-taking example of physics in action. It is well worth taking a few minutes to watch in fullscreen, at high resolution, and with headphones. Olbinski’s timelapses beautifully capture the incredible dynamic motion of our atmosphere. Fittingly, “Vorticity”…
The Seabird That Can’t Get Wet
Unlike most seabirds, the frigatebird does not have waterproof feathers. Landing in the water during a transoceanic flight would quickly drown the bird, so instead they stay aloft. But until recently, scientists did not realize just how adept the birds are. Studying tagged frigatebirds in flight, researchers found that the birds could reach altitudes of…
Reader Question: Blood Jets
Reader shoebill-san asks: are blood jets realistic? when someone gets shot in the movies? This one’s a bit tough to boil down to a yes or a no, honestly. While piercing an artery can cause jetting (more on that below), movies tend to exaggerate the effect. And even among Hollywood movies, there’s a broad variation in…
Reversing Time
Waves contain lots of information. They are also time invariant, which means that they will behave the same regardless of whether time moves forward or backward. This isn’t a property we observe often in life since time just moves forward for us. But a new experiment has demonstrated a method of wave control that can,…
Crash Course Hydrostatics
Crash Course Physics has just put out an episode on fluids at rest (a.k.a. hydrostatics). For those who are unfamiliar, Crash Course is an educational YouTube channel that offers fun, instructional videos on a large and ever-growing array of topics. In this video, they tackle a lot of important basics for fluids, including the principles…
Amphibious Adaptation
Every year newts move to the water in the springtime to mate before returning to land for the rest of the year. This annual aquatic relocation is accompanied by changes in the newt’s body. Flaps of skin grow from their upper jaw to their lower jaw, partially closing their mouths at the corners. This can…
“Memories of Paintings”
In “Memories of Paintings,” Thomas Blanchard gives us an up-close view of fluids and mixing. It’s a calming and curious video made from combinations of paint, oil, oat milk, and soap. The fluids feather and intertwine, driven by differences in surface tension. Paint gets encapsulated by immiscible oil to create little islands of color that…
Turbulence in the Solar Wind
One of the key features of turbulent flows is that they contain many different length scales. Look at the plume from an erupting volcano, and you’ll see eddies that are hundreds of meters across as well as tiny ones on the order of millimeters. This enormous difference in scale is one of the major challenges…
Flamethrowing
Humans have long been fascinated by staring into flames, and the Slow Mo Guys carry on the grand tradition here with 4K, high-speed video of a flamethrower. Like firebreathers, a flamethrower’s fire is the result of a spray of tiny, volatile droplets of fuel. Once ignited, the spray becomes a turbulent jet of flames. Turbulent…