Rotational motion is a great way to break up liquids, as anyone who’s watched a dog shake itself dry can attest. That same centrifugal force is what allows this rotary Keep reading
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Corrugating Water
The characteristics of a surface can have a major impact on the form a flow takes. The photo above shows a corrugated, almost pinecone-like water surface. It’s the result of Keep reading
Swirling Pollen
This photo captures the chaotic mixing present in a simple puddle. Pine pollen strewn across the puddle’s surface acts as tracer particles, revealing some of the motion of the underlying Keep reading
Inside a Humidifier
After this, you may never look at a humidifier the same way again. Ultrasonic humidifiers generate tiny droplets using piezoelectric transducers. When the humidifier is on, the ultrasonic vibrations of Keep reading
Quantum Droplets
Over the past decade, fluid dynamicists have been investigating tiny droplets bouncing on a vibrating fluid. This seemingly simple experiment has remarkable depth, including the ability to recreate quantum behaviors Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 3
A lot of the fluid dynamics in our daily lives centers around the preparation and consumption of food. (And in its digestion afterward, but that’s another story!) Here are a Keep reading
Daily Fluids, Part 1
Just getting cleaned up and ready for the day involves a lot of fluid physics. Here are a few of the phenomena you may see daily without realizing: Plateau-Rayleigh Instability Keep reading
A Day in the Life of a Fluid Dynamicist
Today I’m sharing one of my favorite videos from last year’s Gallery of Fluid Motion. It’s a short film entitled “A Day in the Life of a Fluid Dynamicist.” Although Keep reading
Bubbles and Films Merging
As we’ve seen before, a water droplet can merge gradually with a pool through a coalescence cascade. It turns out that the coalescence of a soap bubble with a soap Keep reading
Wrinkling Fluids
What you see here is a viscous drop falling into a less viscous fluid. Shear forces between the drop and the surrounding fluid cause the drop to quickly deform into Keep reading