Pour the Greek liquor ouzo into water, and your glass will billow with a milky, white cloud, formed from tiny oil droplets. The drink’s unusual dynamics come from the interactions Keep reading
Tag: buoyancy
Toying With Density and Miscibility
Steve Mould opens this video with a classic physics toy that uses materials of different densities as a brainteaser. Two transparent, immiscible liquids fill the container, along with beads of Keep reading
Convection in Action
We’re surrounded daily by convection — a buoyancy-driven flow — but most of the time it’s invisible to us. In this video, Steve Mould shows off what convection really looks Keep reading
Dancing Peanuts
Bartenders in Argentina sometimes entertain patrons by tossing a few peanuts into their beer. Initially, the peanuts sink, but after a few seconds they rise, wreathed in bubbles. Once on Keep reading
Bubble Cleaning
Removing dirt and bacteria from fruits and vegetables is a delicate job; too much force can bruise the produce and hasten spoiling. That’s why fluid mechanicians want to give the Keep reading
“Iridescent”
Soft colors and sudden coalescence combine in this short film from Susi Sie’s team. The visuals rely on liquid lenses (likely oil) floating atop a water bath. You can see Keep reading
Airflow in the Opera
Like so many other performers, the singers and musicians of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House were left without a way to safely perform when the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic began in early Keep reading
“Bubbles Experience”
Acrylic paint, oil, water, and air combine to create ephemeral sculptures in Alberto Seveso’s “Bubbles Experience” series. I love the mixture of shapes he achieves, from large, seemingly-laminar columns to Keep reading
Backswimmers
Backswimmers rule the surface of ponds, streams, and other bodies of water. These insects spend much of their time clinging just beneath the air-water interface, where they hunt larvae and Keep reading
Squishy Actuators
Hard materials don’t always work well in robotics. Here, researchers build soft actuators that can bend, curl, and tighten in order to manipulate objects. They begin by injecting liquid elastomer Keep reading