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Search results for: “art”

  • Reapproaching Supersonic Air Travel

    Reapproaching Supersonic Air Travel

    Before the Concorde even began regular flights, protests over its sound levels caused the U.S. and many other countries to ban overland commercial supersonic flight. Those restrictions have stood for fifty years. But NASA and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics are hoping to make supersonic air travel a possibility again with their experimental X-59 aircraft, designed to have a much quieter sonic boom.

    In supersonic flight, every curve, bolt, and bump generates a shock wave, and these waves tend to coalesce at the front and back of the aircraft, creating strong leading and trailing shocks. It’s these shock waves that are responsible for the double sonic boom that rattles windows and startles those of us on the ground. The X-59 reduces its noise by spreading out those shock waves, a feat designers managed with heavy reliance on computational fluid dynamics. They used wind tunnel studies mainly for validation, since iterating designs in the wind tunnel was far slower than working computationally. With the initial aircraft built, the team will now do test flights and, starting in 2026, will fly over the public and solicit feedback on whether the aircraft is acceptably quiet. (Image credit: NASA; via Physics Today)

    The sound of the X-59's sonic boom compared to other familiar sound levels.
    The sound of the X-59’s sonic boom compared to other familiar sound levels.
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    “Color Show”

    Brightly colored paints and inks mix and flow in artist Roman De Giuli’s “Color Show.” De Giuli typically creates this fluid art in thin layers atop paper. He’s a master of the form, manipulating surface tension gradients to create streaming flows, dendritic patterns, and feathery wisps. If this kind of art is your jam, he offers an app full of live wallpapers* for Android phones. See more of his work on his website and on Instagram. (Video and image credit: R. De Giuli)
    *Not sponsored, I just like his art!

  • Dendritic Painting Physics

    Dendritic Painting Physics

    In the art of Akiko Nakayama, colors branch and split in a tree-like pattern. In studying the process, researchers found the physics intersected art, soft matter mechanics, and statistical physics. In dendritic painting, the process starts with an underlying layer of acrylic paint, diluted with water. Atop this wet layer, you place a drop of acrylic ink mixed with isopropyl alcohol.

    The combination of both layers is key. The alcohol-acrylic drop on a Newtonian substrate will show spreading, driven by Marangoni forces, but no branching. It’s the slightly shear-thinning nature of the diluted acrylic paint substrate that allows dendrites to form. As the overlying drop expands, it shears the underlayer, changing its viscosity and allowing the branches to form. You can see video of the process here. (Image credit: A. Nakayama; research credit: S. Chan and E. Fried; via Physics World)

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    Stomp It Out

    Drop a ball that’s partially filled with water and it may or may not bounce. Why the difference? It all comes down to where the water is before impact. The more distributed the water is along the walls, the less likely a container will bounce. Researchers found they could control the bounce by spinning the bottles before they dropped. Centrifugal force flings the water all over the walls of the spinning bottle, and, when impact happens, the water concentrates into a central jet. For the spinning bottles, that jet is wide, messy, and swirling; it breaks up quickly, expending energy that could otherwise go into a bounce. In effect, the spinning bottle’s jet forms quickly enough to “stomp” the rebound. (Video and image credit: A. Martinez et al.; research credit: K. Andrade et al.)

  • “Nimbus”

    “Nimbus”

    Ephemeral clouds drift through unusual places in artist Berndnaut Smilde‘s works. He creates his clouds from smoke and water, launching them for a matter of seconds before they dissipate. During that time, he and his collaborators take photographs of the clouds, creating a memento of a time already past. Catch more of Smilde’s short-lived weather on his website and Instagram. (Image credit: B. Smilde and collaborators; via Colossal)

  • Light Pillars

    Light Pillars

    These lovely pillars of light over the Mongolian grasslands are the result of tiny, suspended ice crystals. With the right weather conditions, ice crystals can align so that their largest faces are roughly parallel to the ground. In this orientation, the crystals collect and reflect artificial lights from the ground into these towering light pillars. It’s worth noting that the pillars aren’t located directly above the light source; instead, the column of crystals will lie roughly halfway between the light source and the observer. Next time you’re out on a cold winter night, see if you can find one! (Image credit: N. D. Liao; via APOD)

  • Lasers and Soap Films

    Lasers and Soap Films

    Soap films are a great system for visualizing fluid flows. Researchers use them to look at flags, fish schooling and drafting, and even wind turbines. In this work, researchers explore the soap film’s reaction to lasers. When surfactant concentrations in the soap film are low, laser pulses create shock waves (above) in the film that resemble those seen in aerodynamics. The laser raises the temperature at its point of impact, lowering the local surface tension. That temperature difference triggers a Marangoni flow that draws the heated fluid outward. The low surfactant concentration gives the soap film relatively high elasticity, and that allows the shock waves to form.

    In contrast, a soap film with a high concentration of surfactants has relatively little elasticity. In these films (below), the laser creates a mark that stays visible on the flowing soap film. This “engraving” technique could be used to visualize flow in the soap film without using tracer particles. (Image and research credit: Y. Zhao and H. Xu)

    When surfactant concentrations are high, a laser pulse "engraves" spots onto a flowing soap film. Shown in terms of interference (left) and Schlieren (right) imaging.
    When surfactant concentrations are high, a laser pulse “engraves” spots onto a flowing soap film. Shown in terms of interference (left) and Schlieren (right) imaging.
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    “Sfumato”

    Handmade kinetic sculptures by artists Marion Pinaffo and Raphaël Pluvinage spin and paint the sky in colorful smoke in “Sfumato”. Named for an artistic technique in which shading gradually changes tone and hue, the installation was built, the artists note, “without motors, electronics, computer generated images, or artificial intelligence”. Just pure hands-on engineering and physics. Watch the short video of the installation in action for the full effect. You can find more of their work on their website, Vimeo, and Instagram. (Image and video credit: M. Pinaffo and R. Pluvinage; via Colossal)

  • Surviving Rainfall

    Surviving Rainfall

    Water striders spend their lives at the air-water boundary, skittering along this interfacial world. But what happens when falling rain destroys their flat existence? That’s the question that motivated today’s research study, which looks water striders subjected to artificial rain.

    Although the water drops themselves are far heavier than the insects, the water doesn’t strike hard enough to injure the insects. Neither a direct impact nor the forces from a neighboring impact, the researchers found, were enough to pose a problem for the water strider’s exoskeleton. Instead, they’re more likely to get flung or submerged, as follows:

    The initial impact of a raindrop creates a large crater. Depending on the position of the insect relative to the point of impact, this may fling the insect away or pull it down into the cavity.
    The initial impact of a raindrop creates a large crater. Depending on the position of the insect relative to the point of impact, this may fling the insect away or pull it down into the cavity.

    When the drop hits, it creates a big crater in the water’s surface. Insects to the outside of the splash get flung outward, while those closer to the point of impact ride the crater wall downward. As the crater collapses, it forms a thick jet that pushes nearby water striders up with it.

    As the initial cavity collapses, it creates a large jet that can push the strider into the air.
    As the initial cavity collapses, it creates a large jet that can push the strider into the air.

    As that initial jet collapses, it forms a second crater, which — being smaller and narrower — collapses much faster than the first one. That action, researchers found, often submerges a water strider caught in the crater.

    The first jet's collapse creates a second crater, and it's this one that tends to trap and submerge the water striders underwater.
    The first jet’s collapse creates a second crater, and it’s this one that tends to trap and submerge the water strider underwater.

    Fortunately for the insect, their water-repellent nature means they’re covered in a thin bubble of air that lets them survive several minutes underwater. That’s time enough for the water strider to rescue itself. (Image credit: top – H. Wang, animations – D. Watson et al.; research credit: D. Watson et al.; via APS Physics)

  • Tornadoes in a Bucket

    Tornadoes in a Bucket

    In nature, some powerful tornadoes form additional tornadoes within their shear layer. These subvortices revolve around the main tornado, causing massive destruction in their wake. In the laboratory, researchers create a similar multi-tornado system with a spinning disk at the bottom of a shallow, cylindrical layer of water. Depending on how fast the disk spins, different numbers of subvortices form around the main vortex.

    In this poster, researchers show the transition from a 3-subvortex system to a 2-subvortex one. Starting at the 12 o’clock position and moving clockwise, we see 3 subvortices arranged in a triangle. A sudden change in the disk’s rotation speed destabilizes the system, causing the subvortices to break down and shift into a new 2-subvortex configuration. As this happens, material that was isolated in each subvortex (darker blue regions) is suddenly able to mix. That suggests that a real-world multiple vortex tornado might suddenly shed debris if it lost enough angular momentum. Back in the lab, though, the shift to a stable 2-subvortex system once again isolates material in individual subvortices and prevents it from mixing with the rest of the flow. (Image and research credit: G. Di Labbio et al. 1, 2)

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