During digestion, our intestines use two different patterns of muscle contraction to move food through our bodies. Scientists have long wondered why we have this added complexity. Using numerical simulations Keep reading
Category: Research
Mixing Effectively
Mixing two fluids is a tougher task than you might think. One of my favorite asides from a fluids lecture concerned how to mix fruit into yogurt in an industrial Keep reading
Sound Makes Stickier Bandages
Keeping wounds safe and clean is hard when bandages are so prone to coming off. A team of researchers may have found a solution, though, using ultrasound to enhance adhesion. Keep reading
Escaping the Sun
One enduring mystery of the solar wind — a stream of high-energy particles expelled from the sun — is how the particles get accelerated in the first place. The sun Keep reading
Testing Full-Size Engines
Engineers can often use small-scale models to test the physics of their creations, but sometimes there’s no substitute for going large. In this photo, we see a full-size commercial engine Keep reading
Droplet Bounce
A droplet falling on a liquid bath may, if slow enough, rebound off the surface. Its impact sends out a string of ripples — capillary waves — on the bath’s Keep reading
Turbulence in Accretion Disks
Accretion disks form everywhere, from around young, planet-building stars to massive black holes. As matter circles in the disk, it slowly loses angular momentum and falls inward toward the central Keep reading
Landslide-Triggered Tsunamis
After the 2018 Anak Krakatoa eruption, a tsunami that ricocheted through the surrounding waters, killing hundreds on nearby islands. The source of that tsunami was a small landslide. Once the Keep reading
Aerosols and Instruments
Although COVID has disrupted all of our lives, orchestras saw particular disruption, as little was known about how instruments spread aerosol droplets. In this recent study, a team looked at Keep reading
Free Contact Lines
How a simple drop of water sits on a surface is a strangely complicated question. The answer depends on the droplet’s size, its chemistry, the roughness of the surface, and Keep reading