Some water-walking insects are able to leap off a watery interface. One way to model these creatures is with elastic hoops, which can also propel themselves off the water’s surface. Keep reading
Tag: elasticity
Capsule Impact and Bursting
Nature and industry are full of elastic membranes filled with a fluid, from red blood cells to water balloons. A new study looks at how these capsules deform — and Keep reading
Plant Week: Bunchberry Dogwood
The bunchberry dogwood, unlike its taller relatives, is a low-lying subshrub that spreads along the ground. But it sports some of the fastest action of any plant, requiring 10,000 frames Keep reading
Using Instabilities for Manufacturing
Manufacturing textured, flexible surfaces can be difficult, but researchers are exploring ways to use fluid dynamical instabilities to make the process easier. They begin with a pourable polymer mixture that Keep reading
Stopping a Bounce
One way to damp a bouncing ball is to partially fill it with a fluid (a) or granular material (b). For the fluid, the initial impact sloshes the liquid. That doesn’t change Keep reading
Elastic Bounces
A rigid ball accelerated by a moving surface can only ever move as fast as the surface propelling it. But that’s not true for squishy objects like a water droplet. Keep reading
Hair in the Flow
Humans are hairy on the inside. Not in the way that we are on the outside, but in the sense that many interior surfaces of our bodies are covered in Keep reading
When Fire Ants are a Fluid
Substances don’t have to be a liquid or a gas to behave like a fluid. Swarms of fire ants display viscoelastic properties, meaning they can act like both a liquid Keep reading
Squishy Impacts
How spheres impact water has been studied for more than a century. The typical impact for a rigid sphere creates a cavity like the one on the upper left – Keep reading
The Elastic Leidenfrost Effect
Drop some hydrogel beads in a hot frying pan and they’ll bounce, hiss, and screech. Normally, if you drop a ball, it bounces to ever smaller heights until it comes Keep reading