Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
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Merry Christmas
[original media no longer available] Sit back, relax, and enjoy some science-y goodness with Bill Nye as he explains fluids. Happy holidays, everyone!
Santa and the Egg
[original media no longer available] If I were Santa–or the egg in this video–I don’t think I’d particularly like getting sucked through a chimney in this fashion. I wonder if Santa re-kindles the fire and tries to increase air pressure in the house relative to the outside in order to get back out the chimney.…
Reader Question: Snow from Boiling Water?
[original media no longer available] Reader kylewpppd asks: Have you seen the post of a man in Siberia throwing boiling water off of his balcony? Can you provide a better explanation of what’s going on? As you can see in the video (and in many similar examples on YouTube), tossing near boiling water into extremely…
Laminar Fountain
In the midst of holiday travels, take a moment (particularly if you’re flying through Detroit) to enjoy the simple beauty of WET Design’s fountain in the McNamara Terminal. Laminar jets arc through the air almost like perfect crystalline columns of fluid. Watch closely and you’ll see a few wavy variations–like a Plateau-Rayleigh instability creeping in–but…
Airborne Aerosols
This numerical simulation from NASA Goddard shows the motion of particulates in Earth’s atmosphere between August 2006 and April 2007. These aerosols come from various sources including smoke, soot, dust, and sea salt. As these fine particles move through atmosphere, they can have significant effects on weather as well as climate. For example, the particles serve…
Ferrofluid Sculptures
Artist Sachiko Kodama is known for her mesmerizing ferrofluid sculptures. Ferrofluids are a colloidal liquid consisting of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles and a carrier fluid such as water or oil. They can react strongly to magnetic fields, forming spikes, brain-like whorls, and even labyrinths. (Photo credits: Sachiko Kodama; via freshphotons)
Pancake Vortex
In large-scale geophysical flows, rotation and density gradients often play major roles in the structures that form. Here the UCLA SPINLab demonstrates how large, essentially flat vortices–pancake vortices–form in rotating, stratified fluids. The stratification, in this case, is due to the density difference between salt water and fresh water; salt water is denser and therefore…
Freezing Bubbles
If you find yourself some place really cold this holiday season, may I suggest stepping outside and having some fun freezing soap bubbles? The crystal growth is quite lovely, as seen in this photograph. If you live in warmer climes, fear not, you can always experiment in your freezer. It would be particularly fun, I think,…
Tears of Wine
Physicist Richard Feynman once famously ended a lecture by describing how the whole universe can be found in a glass of wine. And there is certainly plenty of fluid dynamics in one. In the photo above, we see in the shadows how a film of wine drips down into the main pool below. This effect…
Underwater Gunfire
When a projectile is fired from a gun or other firearm, it is propelled by the expansion of high-temperature, high-pressure gases resulting from the combustion of a propellant, like gunpowder, inside the weapon. The explosive expansion of these gases transfers momentum to the bullet; however, the gases will continue to expand outward from the gun…