Celebrating the physics of all that flows with Nicole Sharp, Ph.D.
- Profile
Escaping the Flood
Fire ants clump together into giant rafts to stay alive during floods. But these rafts won’t form with just any number of ants. Researchers found that individual ants will actually kick one another away. It’s not until there are about ten ants that the raft formation becomes stable. In this video, the team lays out…
“Metamorphe”
A smoke-like haze drifts over surreal landscapes in the “Metamorphe” series by Reuben Wu and Jenni Pasanen. Though fluidic in appearance, these pieces are a merger between Wu’s drone light photography and Pasanen’s AI-assisted digital creations. Even so, the images are extremely evocative of fluid motion, connected as they are to human senses (like smell,…
Swimming Together
Scientists have long pondered the possibilities of hydrodynamic benefits to the ways fish school. But most analyses of schooling have assumed a fixed spacing that’s far more orderly than what we observe in nature. In this experiment, researchers instead used a pair of robotic swimmers (essentially hydrofoils) to explore a range of swimming formations. What…
How Dunes Form
On its face, the idea that sand and wind can come together to form massive mountainous dunes seems bizarre. But dunes — and their smaller cousins, ripples — are everywhere, not just on Earth but on other planetary bodies where fine particles and atmospheres interact. In this video, Joe Hanson gives a great overview of…
You’re Drunk, Toadlet
Most frogs and toads are excellent jumpers, taking off and landing with a control and grace that rivals elite athletes. Not so for the pumpkin toadlet. These species have become so miniaturized that the structures of their inner ears are too narrow for the fluid flow that helps frogs (and humans!) orient themselves in space.…
Rifts in Rafts
A raft of particles floating on water has some natural cohesion from particle attraction and capillary action. But when the raft is pulled apart, what happens? Does it break cleanly in one spot? Does it stretch and deform? That’s what this video explores. It turns out that the speed you pull the raft at determines…
Aqueous Chandeliers
Colorful dyes falling through water form chandelier-like, branching shapes. These formations are the result of a slight density difference between the heavier dyes and the surrounding water. As the dye falls, Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities cause the mushroom-like blobs and their branches. With creativity and photographic skill, Mark Mawson turns these ephemeral shapes into bold liquid sculptures,…
Treating Water
In an ongoing series, Practical Engineering is looking at how civil engineers deal with sewage and wastewater. In this video, Grady looks at how wastewater gets treated to remove contaminants. Where possible, engineers use gravity to do this job, building infrastructure that slows the flow down and lets gravity make heavier particles settle out. Of…
Extreme Weather
Many of the exoplanets we’ve observed so far are extreme environments. WASP-121b is known as a hot Jupiter, a gas giant so close to its star that it orbits in just 30 hours. The exoplanet is tidally-locked to its star, meaning that one side always faces toward the star and the other faces away. This…