Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
A Toast!
When you lift a glass of champagne or sparkling wine at midnight tonight, your nose and mouth will be greeted by a plethora of aromas, flavors, and sensations propagated by the tiny bubbles in the drink. Carbon dioxide dissolved in the wine gathers in a stream of tiny bubbles that rise at the center of…
Grow Your Own Snowflakes
If your Christmas holiday was a little too green (like mine was), Science Friday has just the activity for you – grow your own snowflakes! With a few materials you probably already have and some dry ice from the store, you can grow and observe ice crystals at home. Although these crystals form from water…
Manipulating Fluids
Combining water-repelling superhydrophobic surfaces with water-loving hydrophilic surfaces allows scientists and engineers to manipulate common fluids. Here a hydrophilic track surrounded by a superhydrophobic background collects and distributes drops of dyed water. The wetting characteristics of the surface combined with surface tension in the liquid drives the flow. No pumping or power input is necessary.…
Splashy Heroines
In his latest work, photographer Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz used splashing liquids to create fantastical superheroine costumes. The splashes are all real, composited together in post-production from hundreds of individual splashes. He uses cold whole milk as his base liquid, sometimes supplementing with dye or paint for color. There’s also a behind-the-scenes video showing how the pictures are made,…
Growing Snowflakes
It’s easy to miss the beauty of a snowflake if you don’t take a close look. These tiny crystals form when water freezes onto a dust particle or other nucleation site, and they grow as water vapor freezes on to the nucleus. The structured appearance of a snowflake comes from the bonds formed between water…
Viscous Droplet Impacts
Viscosity can have a notable effect on droplet impacts. This poster demonstrates with snapshots from three droplet impacts. The blue drops are dyed water, and the red ones are a more viscous water-glycerol mixture. When the two water droplets impact, a skirt forms between them, then spreads outward into a sheet with a thicker, uneven…
“Marco Polo” Theme
Netflix’s new original series “Marco Polo” has a distinctive and fluidsy title sequence. The artistic team at the Mill created the effect by painting images in water atop dense paper before introducing Japanese sumi-ink. Using high-speed photography, they filmed the diffusion of the ink into the water as it reveals the larger picture. There’s a…
Propagating Flames
Like many flows, flames can be unstable and undergo a transition from orderly laminar flow to chaotic turbulent flow. The timelapse image above shows the propagation of a flame front travelling downward. Each blue line represents the forwardmost position of the flame at a specific time. The flame is essentially two-dimensional, held between two glass…
Stepping on Lava
What happens when you step on lava? (First off, don’t try this yourself.) Lava is both very dense and very viscous, so, as illustrated in the animation above, it does not give all that much under pressure. If you were to fall on it, you’d land, sink a little bit, and then get burned. It’s…
Simplified Schlieren Set-up
Schlieren photography offers a glimpse into flows that are usually invisible to the human eye. With a relatively simple set-up–a light source, collimating mirror(s), and a razor blade–it becomes possible to see differences in density. The technique lets one visualize temperature-driven flows like the buoyant convection from a flame or other heat source, and it…