Here’s a simple fluids experiment you can try at home using acrylic paints, ink, isopropyl alcohol and a few other ingredients. When dropped onto diluted acrylic paint, a mixture of Keep reading
Tag: evaporation
The Yarning Droplet
Marangoni bursting takes place in alcohol-water droplets; as the alcohol evaporates, surface tension changes across the liquid surface, generating a flow that tears the original drop into smaller droplets. Here Keep reading
Cracking Droplets
Droplets infused with particles — like coffee — can leave complex stains once they evaporate. Here researchers show the complex cracking pattern that develops as a droplet with nanoparticles evaporates. Keep reading
Triple Leidenfrost Effect
Droplets can skitter across a hot surface on a layer of their own vapor, thanks to the Leidenfrost effect. If two Leidenfrost droplets of the same liquid collide, they merge Keep reading
Modelling Volcanic Bombs
When magma meets water on its journey to the surface, the two form a large, partially molten chunk known as a volcanic bomb. As you would expect from their name, Keep reading
Fractal Frost
As nightly temperatures drop in the northern latitudes, many of us are beginning to wake up to frosty patterns on leaves, windows, and cars. Frost‘s spread is a complex dance Keep reading
Sliding Along
Robust, self-cleaning surfaces are a holy grail for many engineers, but they’re tough to achieve. One necessary ingredient for a self-cleaning surface is the ability to shed water, which is Keep reading
Programmable Capillary Action
Capillary action combines the cohesive forces within a liquid and the adhesive forces between a liquid and solid to enable a liquid to fill narrow spaces, even against the force Keep reading
Snapping When Swollen
The Venus flytrap snaps shut on its hapless prey by swelling cells in its leaves with water. Under the added pressure of a fly’s footstep, the leaves’ snapping instability triggers, Keep reading
Whiskey Webs
Unlike scotch whisky, when American bourbon whiskeys are diluted, they form unique web-like evaporation patterns. These differences arise in part from the way the liquors are aged: scotch is aged Keep reading