Small creatures like springtails and spiders can jump off the air-water interface using surface tension. But larger creatures can water-jump, too, using drag. Here, researchers study drag-based water jumping with Keep reading
Tag: fluid interface
Drag Is Greatest Before Submersion
A new study shows that partially submerged objects can experience more drag than fully submerged ones. This unexpected result comes from the excess fluid that piles up ahead of the Keep reading
Electronic Friction
Years ago, physicists discovered that water flows with surprisingly little friction through narrow carbon nanotubes. At our scale, flow behavior is typically the opposite: there’s greater friction (and, thus, slower Keep reading
Rebounding Jets
The photo sequence in the upper image shows, left to right, a fluid-filled tube falling under gravity, impacting a rigid surface, and rebounding upward. During free-fall, the fluid wets the Keep reading
Surface Tension in Action
Surface tension creates a glassy, smooth layer of water over U.S. swimmer Tyler Clary the instant before he surfaces as he competes in the backstroke. Surface tension arises from intermolecular Keep reading
Vibrating Fluid Interfaces
The Faraday instability forms when a fluid interface is vibrated. This high-speed video shows the differences in the shapes formed by a vibrated fluid interface when the two fluids are Keep reading