Finger-like shapes often form on fluids injected between glass plates, but what happens when that injected fluid contains particles? That’s the situation in this recent study, where researchers sandwiched a Keep reading
Tag: Hele-Shaw cell
Coffee, Magnified
Sometimes it’s nice to see a new perspective on something familiar. These images show oils from coffee beans suspended in hot water, as seen under 40x magnification. The crystals you Keep reading
Dendritic
“What happens when two scientists, a composer, a cellist, and a planetarium animator make art?” The answer is “Dendritic,” a musical composition built directly on the tree-like branching patterns found Keep reading
Drying Out
Look closely at old paintings, and you’ll notice arrays of tiny, straight cracks that form as the paint dried. This sort of pattern formation during drying is not unusual. Here Keep reading
Ferrofluid in a Cell
Ferrofluids are a colloid consisting of magnetically sensitive nanoparticles suspended in a carrier liquid, like oil. They’re often associated with a distinctive spiky appearance when exposed to a magnet, but this isn’t their only magnetic Keep reading
Impressionist Foams
Imagine taking two panes of glass and setting them in a frame with a small gap between them. Then partially fill the gap with a mixture of dye, glycerol, water, Keep reading
Fingering Under Elastic
Take a couple panes of glass and stick a viscous fluid in between them; you’ve now constructed what fluid dynamicists call a Hele-Shaw cell. If you inject a low-viscosity fluid, Keep reading
Viscous Fingers
Viscous fingers form between air and titanium dioxide sol-gel in this photograph. The two fluids are trapped in a thin gap between glass plates – a set-up known as a Keep reading
Viscous Fingers
Take a viscous fluid, like laundry detergent, and sandwich it between two plates of glass. Fluid dynamicists call this set-up a Hele-Shaw cell. If you then inject a less viscous Keep reading
Elastic Walls and Viscous Fingers
The Saffman-Taylor instability, characterized by the branchlike fingers formed when a less viscous fluid is injected into a more viscous one, is typically demonstrated between two rigid walls, as in Keep reading