Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Bubbly Tornadoes Aspin
Rotating flows are full of delightful surprises. Here, the folks at the UCLA SpinLab demonstrate the power a little buoyancy has to liven up a flow. Their backdrop is a spinning tank of water; it’s been spinning long enough that it’s in what’s known as solid body rotation, meaning that the water in the tank…
“One”
A 4-minute, unedited one-shot video of colorful paint sliding down a sheet? Yes, please. Beautiful visuals aside, there are some really interesting physics involved here. It’s unclear whether the there’s any change in the speed at which paint gets deposited at the top of the incline over the course of the video, yet we see…
Visualizing Unstable Flames
Inside a combustion chamber, temperature fluctuations can cause sound waves that also disrupt the flow, in turn. This is called a thermoacoustic instability. In this video, researchers explore this process by watching how flames move down a tube. The flame fronts begin in an even curve that flattens out and then develops waves like those…
Why Nature Loves Fractals
Trees, blood vessels, and rivers all follow branching patterns that make their pieces look very similar to their whole. We call this repeating, self-similar shape a fractal, and this Be Smart video explores why these branching patterns are so common, both in living and non-living systems. For trees, packing a large, leafy surface area onto…
“Kirigami Sun”
Kirigami is a variation of origami in which paper can be cut as well as folded. Here, researchers look at flow through a cut kirigami sheet and how that flow changes with the cuts’ length. In the top central image, white lines mark the paper boundaries. As the cut gaps get larger, flow through them…
“My Own Galaxy”
Fungal spores sketch out minute air currents in this shortlisted photograph by Avilash Ghosh. The moth atop a mushroom appears to admire the celestial view. In the largely still air near the forest floor, mushrooms use evaporation and buoyancy to generate air flows capable of lifting their spores high enough to catch a stray breeze.…
Behind the San Antonio River Walk
How do you manage necessary updates to an iconic landmark like the San Antonio River Walk without disrupting its function? That’s the concept behind this Practical Engineering video, which shows how the city removed and replaced two control gates for the River Walk without ever changing the water level. It’s a neat view both into…
An Exoplanet’s Supersonic Jet Stream
WASP-127b is a hot Jupiter-type exoplanet located about 520 light-years from us. A new study of the planet’s atmosphere reveals a supersonic jet stream whipping around its equatorial region at 9 kilometers per second. For comparison, our Solar System’s fastest winds, on Neptune, are a comparatively paltry 0.5 kilometers per second. The team estimates the…