Years ago, I drove through the Blue Ridge Mountains on a wet and misty New Year’s Day. The fog that clung to the dark trees made the whole world quiet Keep reading
Dual Structure of Water
Water is so ubiquitous in our lives that we rarely recognize just how strange it is. For example, when pure liquid water is supercooled well below its freezing temperature, it Keep reading
Eyes on the Sun
Though it may look like the Eye of Sauron, this image is actually one of our best-ever glimpses of a sunspot. Captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, this Keep reading
Seismic Events Reveal Ocean Temperatures
Decades ago, researchers proposed sending sound waves through the ocean to measure its temperature. Although the technique worked, it ran into noise pollution issues, but now it’s back, using naturally-occurring Keep reading
The Strangeness of Sand
Sand and other granular materials can flow, jam, and transmit forces in counterintuitive ways. This Lutetium Project video gives a nice overview of some of these bizarre properties. Many of Keep reading
The Best of FYFD 2020
2020 was certainly a strange year, and I confess that I mostly want to congratulate all of us for making it through and then look forward to a better, happier, Keep reading
Vanishing Spirits: Aging
The necessary ingredients for scotch whisky’s evaporation patterns are alcohol, surfactants, and polymers; some of those components are absorbed during the spirit’s aging in oak casks. Photographer Ernie Button explored Keep reading
Vanishing Spirits: Rice-Based Whisky
In yesterday’s post, photographer Ernie Button showed us that barrel-aged gin can leave behind an evaporation pattern remarkably similar to scotch whisky. But even among whiskys not every spirit uses Keep reading
Vanishing Spirits: Gin
Photographer Ernie Button has spent years exploring the patterns left by evaporating scotch. A team of researchers found that the uniformity of scotch whisky’s stain requires three ingredients: alcohol to Keep reading
Rocket Yeast
Usually, microbial colonies are grown on a solid substrate, but what happens when they grow on a liquid surface? That’s the question explored in this Gallery of Fluid Motion video Keep reading