Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
“Skimming the Waves”
Common terns are gregarious sea birds that cruise low over the water to fish. When they spot prey, they will dip down to grab a fish from the surface, or they will fold their wings to plunge-dive to depths of half a meter. Compared to gannets and boobies, these are slower, shallower dives that involve…
Ultra-Soft Solids Flow By Turning Inside Out
Can a solid flow? What would that even look like? Researchers explored these questions with an ultra-soft gel (think 100,000 times softer than a gummy bear) pumped through a ring-shaped annular pipe. Despite its elasticity — that tendency to return to an original shape that distinguishes solids from fluids — the gel does flow. But…
Strandbeest Evolution
Theo Jansen’s Strandbeests are massive, wind-powered kinetic sculptures designed to roam Dutch beaches. Conceived in the late 1980s as a way to kick up sand that would replenish nearby dunes, the beests have grown into a decades-long obsession for the artist and his followers. This Veritasium video charts the development and evolution of the Strandbeest…
Anti-Icing Polar Bear Fur
Despite spending their lives in and around frigid water, snow, and ice, polar bears are rarely troubled by ice building up on their fur. This natural anti-icing property is one Inuits have long taken advantage of by using polar bear fur in hunting stools and sandals. In a new study, researchers looked at just how…
A Drop’s Shape Effects
Falling raindrops get distorted by the air rushing past them, ultimately breaking large droplets into many smaller ones. This research poster shows how variable this process is by showing two different raindrops, both of the same 8-mm initial diameter. On the left, the drop is prolate — longer than it is wide — and on…
Icelandic Flows
Known as “The Land of Fire and Ice,” Iceland has some of the most striking landscapes around. Photographer Jennifer Esseiva captures auroras, waterfalls, geysers, rivers, and more in this series from her 2024 trip to the island. Every one of these images bears the fingerprints of fluid dynamics: plasma flows lighting up the night sky;…
Flooding the Mediterranean
Nearly 6 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the ocean and evaporated faster than rivers could replenish it. This created a salty desert that persisted until about 5.3 million years ago. One hypothesis — the Zanclean megaflood — suggests that the Mediterranean refilled rapidly through an erosion channel near the Strait of…
Dutch Water Works
The Netherlands have a long history of extraordinary public works when it comes to water management. With much of the country’s land lying at or below sea level, massive civil engineering infrastructure is a necessity. In this Practical Engineering video, Grady takes us on a tour of Dutch water works, from the centuries-old techniques that…
Disappearing Sea Ice Ridges
As blocks of sea ice shift and float, they can press together, forming ridges spaced every few hundred meters or so. A new study uses aerial observations from recent decades to show that these sea ridges are getting smaller in both size and number, a smoothing of Arctic topography that has many consequences. The team…
Kolmogorov Turbulence
Turbulent flows are ubiquitous, but they’re also mindbogglingly complex: ever-changing in both time and space across length scales both large and small. To try to unravel this complexity, scientists use simplified model problems. One such simplification is Kolmogorov flow: an imaginary flow where the fluid is forced back and forth sinusoidally. This large-scale forcing puts…