FYFD

Category: Art

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    “Pursuit”

    Photographer Mike Olbinski has released yet another breathtaking timelapse film of weather over the Great Plains. This one has a little bit of everything: storms, tornadoes, incredible cloud formations, and even sunny days. Olbinski’s work is a reminder that there’s a constant beautiful drama playing out over our heads if we just take the time to watch. Under blue skies, condensation and turbulence are building towering mountains, and even when the sky is gray, it can be churning like the ocean just over your head. The U.S. Great Plains may be home to particularly dramatic examples of this behavior (thanks largely to the atmospheric influence of the Rocky Mountains), but these same phenomena are going on all the time overhead. (Video and image credits: M. Olbinski)

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    “Fractal”

    Timelapses are a wonderful way to capture the power and majesty of storms like the supercell thunderstorms featured in Chad Cowan’s “Fractal”. The video contains snapshots from six years’ worth of storms over the US’s Great Plains. The highlights include some spectacular mammatus clouds (0:30) and excellent billowing cloud formation (1:27) with turbulence every bit as towering as that of a volcanic plume. June is one of the best months for amazing storms in the Great Plains, largely thanks to the atmospheric mixing that occurs over the Rocky Mountains. If you have the opportunity to witness these amazing natural displays, enjoy it, but be safe! (Video credit: C. Cowan; image via Colossal)

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    “Galaxy Gates”

    Viewing fluids through a macro lens makes for an incredible playground. In “Galaxy Gates”, Thomas Blanchard and the artists of Oilhack explore a colorful and dynamic landscape of paint, oil, and glitter. The nucleation of holes and the breakdown of sheets to filaments and droplets plays a major role in the visuals. The surface layer is constantly peeling away to reveal what’s going on underneath. In many cases this initial motion settles into a field of oil-rimmed droplets floating like planets against a colorful galactic backdrop. Watch carefully in the second half of the video, and you can even catch a few instances of a stretched ligament of fluid breaking into a string of satellite drops, like at 1:51. Check out some of Blanchard’s previous work here and here. (Video credit: Oilhack and T. Blanchard; GIFs and h/t to Colossal)

     
  • Graphene Swirls

    Graphene Swirls

    Graphene powder swirls in alcohol in this prize-winning photo from this year’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council photography competition in the UK. The image was captured while producing graphene ink that can print circuits directly onto paper. According to the researcher’s description, this ink is forced through micrometer-sized capillaries at high pressure to rip the layers apart and produce a smooth, conductive ink in solution. In this photo, we seem to see more conventional mixing driven by the powder’s injection and the variations in surface tension due to the alcohol and its evaporation. The graphene leaves behind beautiful streaklines that highlight its path as it mixes. (Image credit: J. Macleod; via Discover)

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    Asperitas Sunset

    Asperitas clouds, previously known as undulatus asperatus, are the most recently recognized cloud type. These clouds make the sky look like the ocean rolling in waves. Photographer Mike Olbinski, on a recent storm chase earlier this month, caught these spectacular asperitas clouds near sunset. The clouds’ effect is unusual under normal circumstances and completely surreal with this lighting. Check out the video for the full effect. Olbinski caught the clouds on the outskirts of a dying storm cell. That’s a common place to see these formations; despite their ominous appearance, they do not develop storms and are more often seen as storms are ending. (Video and image credit: M. Olbinski; h/t to Paul vdB)

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    Ferrofluid Microlandscapes

    Ferrofluids are an ever-fascinating topic. Consisting of ferromagnetic nanoparticles suspended in a carrier fluid, ferrofluids are known for their bizarre behaviors in the presence of a magnetic field, like their tendency to form pointed peaks reminiscent of Bart Simpson’s hair. In a new Concept Zero video, photographer Linden Gledhill creates fascinating micro-landscapes using ferrofluids suspended in solvents. Driven by magnetic fields, the ferrofluids take on many shapes that change as the solvent and eventually the ferrofluid’s carrier fluid evaporate. Check out the full video above and, if you’re looking for some new decorations for your walls, you can check out the project’s fine art gallery.   (Video and image credit: L. Gledhill and Concept Zero; submitted by L. Gledhill)

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    Sky Glow

    This short but spectacular timelapse video shows the Grand Canyon filled with fog. This phenomenon, known as a temperature inversion, occurs when a warm layer of air traps cold, moist air near the ground. As the inversion develops in the video, you can see wisps of clouds popping up in the canyon, seemingly out of nowhere, as moisture evaporated from the surface condenses in the cool air. Once fog fills the canyon, it flows and laps against the canyon’s sides, much like waves on the ocean. In fact, the physics here is quite similar, just at a much slower speed. (Video and image credit: H. Mehmedinovic / SKYGLOWPROJECT; via Gizmodo; submitted by Ian S.)

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    “Ink in Motion”

    In this short film, the Macro Room team plays with the diffusion of ink in water and its interaction with various shapes. Injecting ink with a syringe results in a beautiful, billowing turbulent plume. By fiddling with the playback time, the video really highlights some of the neat instabilities the ink goes through before it mixes. Note how the yellow ink at 1:12 breaks into jellyfish-like shapes with tentacles that sprout more ink; that’s a classic form of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability, driven by the higher density ink sinking through the lower density water. Ink’s higher density is what drives the ink-falls flowing down the flowers in the final segment, too. Definitely take a couple minutes to watch the full video. (Image and video credit: Macro Room; via James H./Flow Vis)

  • The Colorful Dissolution of Candies

    The Colorful Dissolution of Candies

    Many solids can dissolve in liquids like water, and while this is often treated as a matter of chemistry, fluid dynamics can play a role as well. As seen in this video by Beauty of Science, the dissolving candy coating of an M&M spreads outward from the candy. This is likely surface-tension-driven; as the coating dissolves, it changes the surface tension near the candy and flow starts moving away thanks to the Marangoni effect. With multiple candies dissolving near one another, these outward flows interfere and create more complex flow patterns. 

    These flows directly affect the dissolving process by altering flow near the candy surface, which may increase the rate of dissolution by scouring away loose coating. They can also change the concentration of dissolved coating in different areas, which then feeds back to the flow by changing the surface tension gradient. (Video and image credit: Beauty of Science)

  • When Vortices Collide

    When Vortices Collide

    In a new ad campaign for paint manufacturer Sherwin-Williams, the production team at Psyop show off some awesome fluid dynamics by swirling and injecting paint underwater. You can see one sequence above, where red and blue paint vortex rings collide head-on before breaking down into a purple turbulent cloud. (What a great way to demonstrate the mixing power of turbulence, right?) Here’s the full 30-second ad clip. Impressively, everything in the video is a practical effect, even the segment that flies past multicolored turbulent plumes. You can see how they filmed everything in their behind-the-scenes featurette below. In the meantime, enjoy the mesmerizing beauty of real-world physics and check out FYFD’s “fluids as art” tag for more examples. (Image and video credit: Psyop for Sherwin-Williams; submitted by Alan B.)