Since Michael Faraday, scientists have watched the curious patterns that form in a vibrating liquid. By adding floating particles to such a system, researchers have discovered spiky, hedgehog-like shapes that Keep reading
Category: Research
Stabilizing Foams
Bubbles in a pure liquid don’t last long, but with added surfactants or multiple miscible liquids, bubbles can form long-lasting foams. In soapy foams, surfactants provide the surface tension gradients Keep reading
Oil in Water
In the decade since the Deepwater Horizons oil spill, scientists have been working hard to understand the intricacies of how liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons behave underwater. The high pressures, low Keep reading
Adjusting for Gusts
In flight, birds must adjust quickly to wind gusts or risk crashing. Research shows that the structure of birds’ wings enables them to respond faster than their brains can. The Keep reading
Lake Stars
As snow-covered frozen lakes melt, stars appear on their surface. These lake stars form around holes in the ice where (relatively) warm water seeps up into the slush layer. The Keep reading
Dual Structure of Water
Water is so ubiquitous in our lives that we rarely recognize just how strange it is. For example, when pure liquid water is supercooled well below its freezing temperature, it Keep reading
Seismic Events Reveal Ocean Temperatures
Decades ago, researchers proposed sending sound waves through the ocean to measure its temperature. Although the technique worked, it ran into noise pollution issues, but now it’s back, using naturally-occurring Keep reading
Rocket Yeast
Usually, microbial colonies are grown on a solid substrate, but what happens when they grow on a liquid surface? That’s the question explored in this Gallery of Fluid Motion video Keep reading
Hammerhead Hydrodynamics
Hammerhead sharks have some of the most distinctive craniums in the ocean, which begs the question: how do they swim with that head? New computational fluid dynamics studies suggest that Keep reading
The Structure of the Blue Whirl
Several years ago, researchers discovered a new type of flame, the blue whirl. Now computational simulations have helped them untangle the complex structure of this clean-burning flame. Their work shows Keep reading