When a droplet falls on a surface, it spreads itself horizontally into a thin lamella. Sometimes — depending on factors like viscosity, impact speed, and air pressure — that drop Keep reading
Tag: electrical field
A Plasma Arc Lights
Plasma lighters — as their name indicates — use plasma in place of burning butane. Plasma — our universe’s most common state of matter — is a gas that’s been Keep reading
Paris 2024: Clearing the Air
A quartet of mushroom-shaped structures tower nearly 6 meters above the Olympic Village. Known as Aerophiltres, these devices filter particulates out of the air to provide cleaner air for the Keep reading
Water Builds Static Charge
The ancient Greeks first recognized static electricity, but the mechanisms behind it remain somewhat mysterious. In particular, it’s unclear how two pieces of the same material can build a charge Keep reading
Turbulence in Accretion Disks
Accretion disks form everywhere, from around young, planet-building stars to massive black holes. As matter circles in the disk, it slowly loses angular momentum and falls inward toward the central Keep reading
Driven From Equilibrium
With the right application of force, liquids can take on shapes that defy our intuition. Here researchers sandwiched two immiscible oils between glass slides and applied an electric field. Because Keep reading
Flying Spiders Use Electric Fields
Many species of spider fly with a technique calling ballooning. We’ve touched on spider flight before, but more recent research adds a new dimension to the phenomenon. Researchers showed that Keep reading
Growing Metal Fingers
Eutectic gallium-indium alloy is a room-temperature liquid metal with an extremely high surface tension. Normally, that high surface tension would keep it from spreading easily. But once the metal oxidizes, Keep reading
Testing Vesicles
In biology, vesicles contain a liquid surrounded by a lipid membrane. The characteristics of that membrane – like its stiffness – can change over time in ways that indicate other changes. For Keep reading
Artificial Microswimmers
In a 1959 lecture entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, Richard Feynman challenged scientists to create a tiny motor capable of propelling itself. Although artificial microswimmers took several Keep reading