Getting enough water in arid climates can be tough, but Western diamondback rattlesnakes have a secret weapon: their scales. During rain, sleet, and even snow, these rattlesnakes venture out of Keep reading
Category: Research
Tapping a Can Won’t Save Your Beer
It happens to the best of us: sometimes our beer gets shaken up during transit. One common reaction to this is to tap the side of the can repeatedly before Keep reading
The Physics of Al Dente
It’s a simple weeknight routine: toss a handful of spaghetti noodles in boiling water, wait a few minutes, and enjoy with the sauce of your choice. But there’s a surprising Keep reading
Swinging Jets
In the tiny realm of microfluidics, flows are, in general, completely laminar. That makes mixing a challenge. But it turns out that pumping water steadily into multiple inlets can spontaneously Keep reading
Flowery Splashes
Plunge a disk into water and you’ll get a dome-like splash that closes back on itself. But what happens when that disk has a patterned surface? In this video, researchers Keep reading
Testing Waves in High Gravity
Where waves crash and meet, turbulence is inevitable. But exactly how large waves interact — whether in the ocean, in plasma, or the atmosphere — is far from understood. A Keep reading
“Viscoelasticity Gives You Wings!”
What happens when you drop a hydrogel bead on a water droplet? Because of the hydrogel’s viscoelasticity and its hydrophilic nature, the rebounding bead carries the droplet with it. As Keep reading
Self-Assembly Under Stratification
Sometimes mistakes lead to great discoveries. After leaving a failed outreach demo overnight, researchers discovered a new mechanism for self-assembling particles. In the initial set-up, a layer of fresh water Keep reading
Recreating Volcanic Lightning
Some natural phenomena, like volcanic eruptions or tornado formation, don’t lend themselves to fieldwork — at least not at the height of the action. The danger, unpredictability, and destructiveness of Keep reading
Blowing Vortex Rings from Bubbles
When bubbles burst, we often pay attention to the retracting film and forming droplets, but what happens to the air that was inside? By placing a little smoke inside them, Keep reading