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
Tag: elasticity
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
The Kamifusen
The kamifusen is a traditional Japanese toy made of colorful paper. It resembles a beach ball, but unlike that toy, the kamifusen has an open hole at one end. Given Keep reading
Wrapping Up
It’s often at the intersection of topics that we can learn something new and fascinating. The latest video from The Lutetium Project shows examples of this at the intersection of Keep reading
Hummingbird Drinking
Hummingbirds are master acrobats, able to hover and drink simultaneously before flitting off to the next flower. At first glance, you might expect that their tongues are simply tiny straws Keep reading
Skipping Squishy Spheres
Skipping a stone on water requires a flat, disk-like stone thrown at a shallow angle, but elastic spheres are remarkable skippers, too, even at higher impact angles. Researchers at the Splash Keep reading
The Silence of Owls
Owls are nearly silent hunters, able to swoop down on their prey without the rush of air over their wings giving away their approach, thanks to several key features of Keep reading