Ferrofluids are known for their fascinating behaviors when subjected to magnetic fields, especially for the distinctive peaks they can form. In this video, we see a very thin ferrofluid drop Keep reading
Tag: droplet breakup
Shocking Droplets
Typical liquid drops will break apart into long, stretched ligaments and a spray of tiny droplets when deformed. But with just a small addition of polymers, these same liquids become Keep reading
Stopping Jet Break-Up
When a stream of liquid falls, a surface tension effect called the Plateau-Rayleigh instability causes small variations in the jet’s radius to grow until the liquid breaks into droplets. For Keep reading
“Frozen” Water Stream
We saw previously how vibrating a falling stream of water and filming it with a matching camera frame rate appears to “freeze” the falling liquid. This video shows the same Keep reading
Breaking Up Falling Beads
In a stream of falling liquid, surface tension instabilities cause the fluid to break up into droplets. This video shows a similar experiment with a stream of glass beads, a Keep reading
Bouncing and Break-Up
In the collage above, successive frames showing the bouncing and break-up of liquid droplets impacting a solid inclined surface coated with a thin layer of high-viscosity fluid have been superposed. Keep reading
Rebounding
A ping pong ball bounces off a puddle, drawing a liquid column upward behind it. This photo shows the instant after the fluid has disconnected from the ball, allowing it Keep reading
Pinch-Off
This high-speed video reveals a fascinating bit of kitchen sink physics. When a water droplet pinches off from the nozzle, the thin filament of fluid that connected the droplet to Keep reading
Frozen Fluid Illusion
This video creates the illusion of a jet of water frozen in mid-air. The effect is achieved by vibrating the water at the frequency of the speaker, then filming at Keep reading
Colliding Jets
Two jets colliding can form a chain-like fluid structure. With increasing flow rate, the rim of the chains becomes wavy and unstable, forming a fishbone structure where droplets extend outward Keep reading