What goes on when droplets merge is tough to observe, even with a high-speed camera. There are many factors at play: any momentum in the droplets, surface tension, gravity, and Keep reading
Category: Research
Using Electric Fields to Avoid Dripping
Anyone who’s painted a room at home is familiar with the frustration of drips. At certain inclinations, practically every viscous liquid develops these gravity-driven instabilities. They’re troublesome in manufacturing as Keep reading
Inferring Flows with Neural Networks
Fluid dynamicists have long used flow visualization methods to get a qualitative sense for flows, but it’s rare to derive much quantitative data from this imagery. But that may soon Keep reading
Gliding Birds Get Extra Lift From Their Tails
Gorgeous new research highlights some of the differences between fixed-wing flight and birds. Researchers trained a barn owl, tawny owl, and goshawk to glide through a cloud of helium-filled bubbles Keep reading
Collapsing Inside a Soap Film
There’s a common demonstration of surface tension where a loop of string is placed in a soap film and then the film inside the loop is popped, making it suddenly Keep reading
Watery Suction Enables Spiderman-Like Climbing
Spiderman makes it look easy, but sticking to surfaces with enough force to climb them is a challenge at the human scale. These researchers tackled the problem with a new Keep reading
Using Flow Separation to Fly
Fixed-wing flight typically favors the efficiency of long skinny wings, which is why so many aircraft have them. But for smaller flyers, like micro air vehicles (MAVs), short and stubby Keep reading
In Search of a Better Espresso
Of specialty coffee drinks, espresso has the most cup-to-cup variation in quality. For those who are not coffee aficionados — such as yours truly — espresso is made by forcing Keep reading
Perfecting Giant Bubbles
Whether young or old, everyone enjoys blowing soap bubbles, and the bigger the bubble, the more impressive it is. Researchers have been on a quest to discover how bubbles can Keep reading
Wild Gray Seals Clap Back
Here’s a paper that cries out for fluid dynamical/acoustical follow-up: wild gray seals have been observed signaling underwater by clapping their forefins. As you can hear in the video, the Keep reading