Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Diving Together
Two spheres dropped into water next to one another form asymmetric cavities. A single ball’s cavity is perfectly symmetric, and so are two spheres’, provided they are far enough apart. But for close impacts, the spheres influence one another, creating a mirror image. The same asymmetric cavity also forms when a sphere is dropped near…
Jupiter in Infrared
These recent composite images from the James Webb Space Telescope show Jupiter in stunning infrared detail. They’re the result of several images taken in different infrared bands, then combined and rendered in visible light. In general, the redder colors show longer wavelengths and the bluer ones show shorter wavelengths. Jupiter’s cloud bands appear in beautiful…
Finger Painting Physics
Spreading paint with a brush or with fingers is familiar activity for most people. It’s also similar to processes used in industry for spreading thin layers of paint and other complex fluids. In a recent study, researchers took a look at how a soft, elastic blade (similar to a paintbrush or one’s fingers) spreads shear-thinning…
Blooms in the Black Sea
The Black Sea gains its name from its dark waters, but those waters don’t stay dark year-round. In this natural color satellite image, streaks of milky blue bloom through the summer waters, thanks to the presence of a species of phytoplankton armored with white calcium carbonate. Despite their microscopic size, the phytoplankton’s presence is visible…
Recycling Urban Heat
In urban areas, buildings and concrete surfaces create a heat effect that can make temperatures in the city substantially higher than in nearby rural areas. That heat isn’t just above ground, either. It seeps into the subsurface, measurably increasing groundwater temperatures. In a recent study, authors suggest this excess subsurface heat could be reclaimed and…
Yellowstone Flooding
In June of 2022, the area around Yellowstone National Park saw catastrophic flooding. The combined effects of rainfall and snowmelt overwhelmed waterways and washed out many roads and other structures in and around the park. In this video, Grady from Practical Engineering breaks down the floods and their aftermath, including how the area can be…
“Titan”
Saturn’s moon Titan is a fascinating foil to our planet. It’s the only other body in our solar system with liquid bodies — lakes and seas — on its surface. But where Earth’s oceans are filled with water, Titan’s frigid lakes are liquid hydrocarbons. This video, “Titan,” is a short film inspired by the moon’s…
Eroding Grains
When a spacecraft comes in for a landing (or a tag similar to what OSIRIS-REx did), there’s a turbulent jet that points straight into a bed of particles. How those particles react — how they erode and the crater that forms — depends on many factors, including the cohesion between particles. In these experiments, researchers…
Peering Into the Gap
This video offers a glimpse into turbulence developing in a classic flow set-up, a Taylor-Couette cylinder. The apparatus consists of two upright, concentric cylinders; the outer cylinder is fixed, and the inner one rotates. This video shows the gap between the cylinders, and it’s rotated so that the inner cylinder is at the bottom of…
Hydrophobic Ice
Water is an endlessly peculiar substance, eager to adopt many configurations. Each molecule can form up to four, highly-directional bonds. In this study, researchers found an unexpected configuration, a 2D type of ice known as bilayer hexagonal ice, on a corrugated gold surface. Bilayer hexagonal ice has been known since the late 1990s, but it…