When a tire spins over a wet roadway, pressure at the front of the tire generates a lifting force; if that lift exceeds the weight of the car, it will Keep reading
Category: Research
A Macro View of Weathering
Water constantly weathers sedimentary rock, both physically — through abrasion — and chemically — through dissolution and recrystallization. Now researchers have gotten their first view of this weathering at the Keep reading
Swapping Emulsions
Chemically speaking, oil and water don’t mix. But with a little fluid mechanical effort, it’s possible to make them an emulsion — a mixture of oil droplets in water or Keep reading
Decelerating Jets
For more than a century, scientists have been fascinated by the jet that forms after a drop impacts a liquid. In this study, researchers tracked fluorescent particles in the fluid Keep reading
Whiskey Webs
Unlike scotch whisky, when American bourbon whiskeys are diluted, they form unique web-like evaporation patterns. These differences arise in part from the way the liquors are aged: scotch is aged Keep reading
Insect-Inspired Flight
Insects are incredibly agile and resilient fliers, capable of colliding and recovering without damage. Engineers are only beginning to capture these characteristics in their robots. Here, engineers use a soft Keep reading
Meltwater Tracking Via Seal
Monitoring meltwater from Antarctic glaciers is critical for understanding our changing climate, but such remote and inaccessible regions are tough to collect data in. So researchers are turning to local Keep reading
Jumping Frost
Liquid water is easily electrically charged, due to its polar nature. That’s why rubbing a comb is enough to deflect a stream of water. Ice is harder to charge, but Keep reading
Freezing Splats
In fluid physics, there’s often a tug of war between different effects. For droplets falling onto a surface colder than their freezing point, the hydrodynamics of impact, sudden heat transfer, Keep reading
Chaotic Mixing in Porous Media
One of the peculiar characteristics of viscous, laminar flows is that they are reversible. Squirt dye into glycerin, stir it one way, then the opposite direction, and the dye returns Keep reading