Engineers have developed a new 3D-printing technique that uses molten aluminum to quickly manufacture large-scale parts. This Liquid Metal Printing method deposits the metal into a bed of tiny glass Keep reading
Category: Research
Serpents and Ouroboros
Beads of condensation on a cooling, oil-slicked surface have a dance all their own in this video. Large droplets gobble up their fellows as they follow serpentine paths; each new Keep reading
Skittering Drops
Drip some ethanol on a hot surface, and you’d expect it to spread into a thin layer and evaporate. But that doesn’t always happen, and a recent study looks at Keep reading
The Unusual Auroras of Mars
Earth, Saturn, and Jupiter have auroras at their poles, generated by the interaction of their global magnetic fields with the solar wind. Mars has no global magnetic field, only remnants Keep reading
Eel-Like Swimming
Working with living creatures can’t always reveal their mechanics. That’s one reason engineers like building biorobots. Here, researchers built 1-guilla, an eel-like swimmer, and studied how its body motions affected Keep reading
Feynman’s Sprinkler Solved
In graduate school, my advisor introduced us to a particularly vexing fluid dynamical thought experiment known as the Feynman sprinkler. After observing an S-shaped sprinkler that rotated when water shot Keep reading
Stretching Ant Rafts
In their natural habitat, fire ants experience frequent floods and so developed the ability to form rafts. Entire colonies will float out a flood in a two-ant-thick raft anchored to Keep reading
Lasing Bubbles
The thin shells of bubbles interact with light in fascinating ways; that is, of course, the source of their brilliant colors. In this recent study, researchers discovered that bubbles can Keep reading
Tumbling in Air
When snowflakes and volcanic ash fall, they tumble. Historically, it’s been too hard to observe this behavior first hand — the particles are too small to easily follow with a Keep reading
Water Reduces Coffee’s Charge
Grinding coffee beans builds up electrical charge as the beans fracture into smaller and smaller pieces. The polarity of the charge depends on the bean’s moisture content; lighter roasts tend Keep reading