When brooding their eggs, penguins can rarely leave the nest, but answering nature’s call is still necessary. To keep the nest clean, Adélie penguins project their feces up to more Keep reading
Category: Research
Artificial Microswimmers
Tiny organisms swim through a world much more viscous than ours. To do so, they swim asymmetrically, often using wave-like motions of tiny, hair-like cilia along their bodies. Mimicking this Keep reading
Undulating Keeps Flying Snakes Steady
Flying snakes undulate through the air as they glide. But, unlike on land, these wiggles aren’t for propulsion. A new study shows instead that they are key to the snake Keep reading
Branching Light with Soap Bubbles
By shining laser light through soap bubbles, researchers have demonstrated branching flow in light for the first time. This branching occurs when waves travel through a disordered medium where the Keep reading
Quantifying Bioluminescence
Some single-celled organisms, like dinoflagellates, light up when disturbed. This bioluminescence is considered a defense mechanism, triggered by threats to the organism. Now researchers are quantifying just what it takes Keep reading
Pumping Through Liquid Tubes
As the tubes carrying a liquid get smaller, it becomes harder and harder to keep fluids flowing. Friction between the fluid and the wall brings flow there to a standstill Keep reading
Shedding Light on Martian Dust Storms
In 2018, Mars was enveloped by a global dust storm that lasted for months. Although such storms had been seen before, the 2018 storm offered an unprecedented opportunity for observation Keep reading
The Tolling of the Atmosphere
Strum a musical instrument and you create a host of vibrations at many different frequencies. The same is true of our atmosphere, which rings at frequencies far too low for Keep reading
The Challenges of Being Small
For juvenile fish, feeding is a challenge. Their small size — often less than 5 mm in length — makes hydrodynamically capturing prey much harder because of viscosity’s relatively larger Keep reading
When Shear Meets Slip
One of the classic concepts students learn early in their fluids education is the no-slip condition. In essence, this idea says that friction between a solid object — say, a Keep reading