It’s all blue skies in Roman De Giuli’s short film, “Perfect Sky.” Created with paint, ink, and glitter on paper, it’s a relaxing piece of fluid art. Put on your headphones, take a deep breath, and plunge in. You’ll see lots of gorgeous Marangoni effects, some low Reynolds number mixing, and various instabilities. (Video and image credit: R. De Giuli)
Yellowstone National Park is always fascinating and surreal, but especially so in winter when volcanically-heated geysers and springs meet frigid, snowy weather. This short film from Drew Simms shows the park and its wildlife in the depths of winter. The bison rely on thick, shaggy fur coats to trap heat and keep dry. Steam and mist mingle around springs and giant plumes rise from geysers. What a strange and beautiful landscape! (Video and image credit: D. Simms)
In the 1930s, Harold Edgerton used strobed lighting to capture moments too fast for the human eye, including his famous “Milk-Drop Coronet”. Recreating his set-up is far easier today, thanks to technologies like Arduino boards that make timing the drop-strobe-camera sequence simple. This poster is a collage of Edgerton-like images captured by students at Brown University. Even nearly a century after Edgerton, there are countless variations on this beautiful slice of physics: all from the splash of a simple drop striking a pool. (Image credit: R. Zenit et al.)
Our landscapes have changed dramatically over the last 200 years of urban development, but traces of the land’s past still remain. Many streams and rivers that once ran on the surface persist in underground culverts. Bruce Willen’s “Ghost Rivers” installation highlights the path of one such waterway, Sumwalt Run, which flows across what is now the Remington and Charles Village neighborhoods of Baltimore. The project includes ten installations that describe the hidden water and its history as well as a wavy, blue line that marks its path. (Image credits: Public Mechanics and F. Hamilton, see alt text; installation: B. Willen; via Colossal)
Little by little, snow and ice transform the landscape in Jamie Scott’s film “Winter.” From individual snowflakes to entire forest vistas, the timelapses showcase how winter remakes every surface in its image. The growing icicles show freezing in action, but I especially love seeing the “flow” brought about by progressively greater snowfall. Tree limbs bow, shrubs swell, and riverbanks contract as the snow gets thicker. And that final shot that pulls out from single snowflakes to the entire forest? Stunning! (Video and image credit: J. Scott et al.; via Colossal)
Roman De Giuli’s “High Flow” is vibrant and energetic. Colorful paints and inks flow across the page, creating complex patterns. I love the blossoming flows, feathery fronds, and spreading Marangoni effects. De Giuli’s films never disappoint! (Video and image credit: R. De Giuli)
In “Alive,” filmmaker Christopher Dormoy explores acrylic paints and the variety of ways in which the medium can be used. From a fluids perspective, there’s dripping, viscous flow, turbulent eddies, billowing plumes, and “accidental painting” due to density-driven instabilities. It’s a fun tour of fluid phenomena in art. What examples do you spot? (Video and image credit: C. Dormoy)
Solar wind particles slam into the atmosphere near Earth’s poles, creating billowing curtains of glowing plasma known as auroras. Beneath the earth, molten rock seethes and flows, squeezed up fissures to release explosive gases and spurts of lava to the surface world. These natural phenomena are captured in the left and center of this image, respectively. To the right, three plumes of water vapor rise from a geothermal power plant. Three very different phenomena — all fluid dynamical in nature and all captured in a single image of Iceland. It’s no wonder the island is covered in tourists. (Image credit: W. Gorecka; via APOD)
In marbling, an artist floats paints on a viscosified water bath, using various thin tools to manipulate the final image. Many cultures have developed a version of this art, but for many it will be most recognizable as a technique used to decorate book interiors. In this video, researchers consider the physics behind this beautiful practice. Surface tension helps keep the paint on the surface, even though it’s denser than the water it’s on. Variations in surface tension shape and reshape the surface as new colors are added. And then low-Reynolds-number effects help artists mix the paints without inertia or diffusion disturbing the pattern. See more examples here, here, and here. (Video credit: Y. Sun et al.)
