When a drop settles gently against a pool of the same liquid, it will coalesce. The process is not always a complete one, though; sometimes a smaller droplet breaks away Keep reading
Category: Phenomena
Billowing Ouzo
Pour the Greek liquor ouzo into water, and your glass will billow with a milky, white cloud, formed from tiny oil droplets. The drink’s unusual dynamics come from the interactions Keep reading
Building Underwater Foundations
For bridges, deep-sea platforms, and marine wind turbines, engineers have to build secure foundations able to withstand extremely heavy loads. Just how do they do this? One technique — driven Keep reading
The Shape of Rain
In our collective imagination, a raindrop is pendant shaped, wide at the bottom and pointed at the top. But, in fact, a falling raindrop experiences much more complicated shapes. Here, Keep reading
Martian Auroras
Auroras happen when energetic particles — usually from the solar wind — interact with the atmosphere. Here on Earth, they’re most often found near the poles, where our strong global Keep reading
Breaking Down a Water-Powered Timer
In his latest “cutaway” video, Steve Mould takes a look at how you can nest siphons to create a system that periodically flushes itself. This kind of water-powered timer is Keep reading
A Triangular Prominence
Our Sun is a maelstrom of light and heat, a constant battlefield for plasma and magnetic fields. This recent prominence, captured by Andrea Vanoni and others, bore a striking triangular Keep reading
The Art of French Drains
Civil engineers face a constant challenge trying to protect their structures from water — both above and below the ground. Subsurface water can build up enough pressure to lift and Keep reading
Engineering the City of Venice
In 452, Roman refugees established what became the city of Venice across a series of low-lying marshy islands in a lagoon. With no solid ground available, Venice has needed clever Keep reading
Swirls of Green and Teal
Captured in March 2024, this satellite image of the Gulf of Oman comes from an instrument aboard the PACE spacecraft. The picture of a phytoplankton bloom is not quite natural-color, Keep reading