Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Spinning Liquids With Lego
One way to explore the effects of spinning liquids at high-speeds is to build an expensive and precise lab apparatus. Another method is to raid the Lego bin. Here, a YouTuber builds ever-more-elaborate Lego constructions to spin a sphere of water. He begins with a relatively straightforward magnetic stirrer that creates a bathtub vortex in…
“Iridescent”
Soft colors and sudden coalescence combine in this short film from Susi Sie’s team. The visuals rely on liquid lenses (likely oil) floating atop a water bath. You can see how the fluids get manipulated in their behind-the-scenes video, which also provides a peek at how the sound effects get made. (Video credit: S. Sie…
Toilet Plumes
Toilet flushes are gross. We’ve seen it before, though not in the same detail as this study. Here, researchers illuminate the spray from the flush of a typical commercial toilet, like those found in many public restrooms. They found that flushing generates a plume of droplets that reaches 1.5 meters in under 8 seconds, producing…
Where Fresh and Salty Meet
Waterways twist through the wetlands of Adair Bay in this astronaut-captured image of northwestern Mexico. The estuary marks the transition between the Great Altar Desert and the Gulf of California. Fresh and salt water mix in the sediment-rich waterways. Mangroves and other salt-tolerant vegetation flourish in the coastal marsh. During low tides, evaporating water leaves…
Bending in Bubbles
Inside a cavity with a square cross-section, bubbles form an array. The shapes of their edges are determined by surface tension and capillarity (lower half of center image). Adding an elastic ribbon into the bubbles (upper half of center image) means that the bubbles’ shapes are determined by a competition between the elasticity of the…
Kelvin-Helmholtz Flows Downhill
Gravity currents carry denser fluids into lighter ones, like cold air drifting under your door in winter or dense fogs flowing downhill in San Francisco. Here, researchers visualize the situation using denser salt water flowing into fresh water. Once the gate separating the two fluids rises, the salt water slides down an artificial slope into…
“The Dark Days”
“The Dark Days” is the third film in artist Thomas Blanchard’s N-UPRISING series. Like its siblings, this film features plants and insects, along with creeping — and sometimes overwhelming — fluid flows. The vivid colors of the orchids here make an uncomfortable juxtaposition with the air raid horns, sirens, and sounds of war that make…
Icicles and Impurities
In nature, icicles often form horizontal ripples along their outer surface. Researchers found that these shapes only form when impurities are present in the water forming icicles; icicles made from pure water are smooth. Now researchers are uncovering more details of the ripple formation process, though the underlying mechanism remains unknown. Researchers first grew wavy…
Exascale Simulations
Capturing what goes on inside a combustion engine is incredibly difficult. It’s a problem that depends on turbulent flow, chemistry, heat transfer, and more. To represent all of those aspects in a numerical simulation requires enormous computational resources. It’s not simply the realm of a supercomputer; it requires some of the fastest supercomputers in existence.…
Dancing Over Ridges
When flowing over a ridged surface, particles follow a drifting, helical trajectory. In this video, researchers delve into the physics behind this phenomenon. Differences in the pressure gradient along different parts of the corrugation push particles along the groove. With their analysis, the team is able to predict particle trajectories above surface roughness of any…