Periods of freezing and thawing can leave complicated patterns in ice, as seen in this aerial photo of Binnewater Lake in New York. Ice rarely forms evenly on large bodies Keep reading
Category: Phenomena
Boiling Water Using Ice Water
Steve Mould demonstrates a neat thermodynamic trick in this video by using ice water to boil hot water. The key to understanding this is recognizing that the boiling point of Keep reading
The World in a Droplet
Capturing refracted images in a droplet is a popular pastime among high-speed photographers, and in this solo Slow Mo Guy outing, we get to see that process in video. Physically, Keep reading
Where are Titan’s Deltas?
Saturn’s moon Titan is the only other planetary body in our solar system known to have bodies of liquid on its surface. But where Earth has lakes and seas of Keep reading
Collective Catfish Convection
Gather many birds, fish, or humans together and you often get collective motion that’s remarkably fluid-like in appearance. This video shows a group of juvenile striped eel catfish, an (eventually) Keep reading
Breaking the Euler Equations
Mathematicians like to break things. Or, more exactly, they like to know when the equations we use to describe physics break down. One popular target in fluid mechanics are the Keep reading
When the Mediterranean Dried Up
Geological evidence shows that millions of years ago, the Mediterranean Sea nearly dried out. In fluid mechanics, we’d describe this problem using one of our fundamental equations: conservation of mass, Keep reading
Captured by Waves
Acoustic levitation and optical tweezers both use waves — of sound and light, respectively — to trap and control particles. Water waves also have the power to move and capture Keep reading
Bouncing Off Defects
The splash of a drop impacting a surface depends on many factors — among them droplet speed and size, air pressure, and surface characteristics. In this award-winning video from the Keep reading
Superman’s Hair Gel
I love a good tongue-in-cheek physical analysis of superheroes. This estimate of the drag force experienced by Superman’s hair when outracing a plane or speeding bullet was done by Cornell Keep reading