A drop of sugar syrup falls into a pool of methylated spirits, producing a Worthington jet and several ejected droplets. Although surface tension holds the jet in a smooth shape, the refractive index of the spirits reveals the turbulent mixing within the jet. (Photo credit: Rebecca Ing)
Category: Art
Sound Sculptures
This is another fun and artistic use of non-Newtonian fluids (paint) vibrating on a speaker cone for advertising purposes. The shear-thinning viscous properties of the paint vie with surface tension to create lovely instantaneous sculptures of color. Check out Canon’s Pixma ads for similar artwork.
Ink Sculptures
Dripping ink into water can create fantastic structures as the two fluids mix. In this artwork there are numerous complex mixing phenomena: the eddies and multiple scales of turbulence; the long, thin streams of laminar flow; and the wispy mushrooms and umbrellas of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. (Photo credit: Mark Mawson; via @thinkgeek)
“Oil in Water”
There’s beauty even in something as simple as two immiscible fluids–oil and water–colliding. (Video credit: Shawn Knol)
High-Speed Ferrofluid
High-speed video captures the behavior of a ferrofluid trapped between two magnets. Ferrofluids contain tiny ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid like oil or water. The distinctive peaks and valleys of a ferrofluid subject to a strong magnetic field is due to the normal-field instability and is a result of the fluid minimizing its magnetic energy.
Soap Film Flow Viz
Flowing soap films provide an educational and beautiful method for visualizing the wakes of objects in two-dimensional flows. High-speed photography highlights the interference patterns on the soap film, providing detail without the necessity for the particulate tracking of other flow visualization methods. Highlights here include wakes behind bluff bodies, interacting cylinders, and flapping flags. (pdf) #
Flow Vis
Place a viscous fluid in the gap between two plates of glass and you have created a Hele Shaw cell. If a less viscous fluid is then injected between the plates, a fascinating pattern of finger-like protrusions results. This is known as the Saffman-Taylor instability. Because of the relative simplicity of the set-up, it’s possible to create such experiments at home using common household fluids like glycerin, dish soap, dyed water, or laundry detergent. (Photo credits: Jessica Rosencranz, Jessica Todd, Laurel Swift et al, Andrea Fabri et al, Tanner Ladtkow et al, Mike Demmons et al, Trisha Harrison, Justin Cohee, and Erik Hansen)
Microgravity Combustion
This collage of three combustion images reveals the beautiful symmetry of flames in microgravity. In the absence of gravity, flames are spherical, and, in the confines of a spacecraft, any combustion is extremely dangerous. Thus, most microgravity combustion experiments occur in drop towers. From NASA:
Each image is of flame spread over cellulose paper in a spacecraft ventilation flow in microgravity. The different colors represent different chemical reactions within the flame. The blue areas are caused by chemiluminescence (light produced by a chemical reaction.) The white, yellow and orange regions are due to glowing soot within the flame zone. #
Fishbone Jet Collision
The collision of two jets of radius 420 μm results in a fishbone-like structure. The fluid contains a dilute polymer mixture whose viscoelastic effects resist the tendency of the droplets to detach from the ligaments. The breakup of the jets into droplets is important for applications in inkjet printing. The photo has been rotated 90-degrees for effect. (Photo credit: Sungjune Jung)
