Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Linking Size and Origin in Droplets
Respiratory diseases like measles, flu, tuberculosis, and COVID-19 are all transmitted by droplets. Some are tiny and airborne, capable of traveling long distances. Other drops are larger and only capable of traveling short distances. A new review paper consolidates what we know about these droplets and categorizes them by size and origin. It turns out…
An August Arc
In summer, the fjords of Greenland are littered with ice, but in August 2023, satellites caught an odd interloper. See the thin white arc spanning the fjord in the photo above? Scientists suspect this ephemeral feature was a wave caused by a large iceberg calving off the glacier on the right. When large chunks of…
A Better Ear Plug
Ear plugs can be wonderful at blocking outside noise, but they come with a downside: they typically amplify internal bodily sounds, like our heartbeat, breathing, and chewing. This effect, called occlusion, is distracting enough for some users to forego ear protection or hearing aids. But a new prototype offers a hope for an occlusion-free future…
Slumping Ceramics
Dripping, drooping pottery is artist Philip Kupferschmidt’s specialty. Covered in drips and drops, slumping as if half-melted, Kupferschmidt’s ceramics seem partially liquid. With their colorful glazes, these pieces ooze personality. (Image credit: P. Kupferschmidt; via Colossal)
Desalination in Action
Desalination — the removal of salt from water — is an important process for providing the fresh water we need, but it’s quite expensive in terms of energy. In this Practical Engineering video, Grady demonstrates small-scale versions of the two most common methods for purifying water: distillation and reverse osmosis. In distillation, salt water is…
Understanding Cyanobacteria
Over 2 billion years ago, cyanobacteria emerged as Earth’s first photosynthesizing organisms. Today they are widespread and critical contributors to both carbon and nitrogen cycles. Colonies can form large mats, like those pictured above, but, even at the microscale, cyanobacteria are actively forming patterns among individual bacteria. A recent study considers cyanobacteria as active matter.…
Shifting Sands
Qinghai Lake sits in western China, where a warmer and wetter climate has been raising the lake’s water level in recent years. These two satellite images, from 2010 and 2022, show the effects of those changes. Sand spits that once separated the smaller Shadao Lake from the surrounding lake have worn away and sunk, rejoining…
Swimming Through Mud
At the bottom of ponds, nematodes and other creatures swim in a world of mud. They squirm their way through a sediment of dirt particles suspended in water. Mud, of course, is notoriously impossible to see through, so to understand these creatures’ movements, scientists turn instead to biorobotics. Here, a team uses a magnetic head…
Melting Ice Cap
This award-winning photo by Thomas Vijayan shows waterfalls of ice melt off the Austfonna ice cap. The third-largest glacier in Europe, Austfonna is located in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. Like other glaciers, it sees rising temperatures and increased melting due to climate change. Vijayan highlights that melting with his focus on the many waterfalls slicing through…
Withstanding Rocket Launches
It takes a lot of power to lift a giant rocket‘s payload all the way to orbit, and in the first moments of a rocket launch, all that energy is directed downward at a concrete pad. How do engineers design and protect launch pads? In this Practical Engineering video, Grady tackles just that question through…