Many plants control the curvature of their leaves by selectively pumping water into cells that line the outer surface. This swelling triggers bending. Engineers created their own version of this Keep reading
Tag: fluid-solid interaction
Sandgrouse Soak in Water
Desert-dwelling sandgrouse resemble pigeons or doves, but they have a very different superpower: males can soak in and hold 25 milliliters of water in their feathers, which they carry tens Keep reading
Bending in the Stream
Nature is full of cilia, hairs, and similar flexible structures. Unsurprisingly, flows interact with these structures very differently than with smooth surfaces. Here, researchers investigate flow in a channel lined Keep reading
Bending in Bubbles
Inside a cavity with a square cross-section, bubbles form an array. The shapes of their edges are determined by surface tension and capillarity (lower half of center image). Adding an Keep reading
Leaping Hoops
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
Collapsing Inside a Soap Film
There’s a common demonstration of surface tension where a loop of string is placed in a soap film and then the film inside the loop is popped, making it suddenly Keep reading
The Physics of Al Dente
It’s a simple weeknight routine: toss a handful of spaghetti noodles in boiling water, wait a few minutes, and enjoy with the sauce of your choice. But there’s a surprising Keep reading
Sorting Blood Cells
Many diseases – like sickle-cell anemia and malaria – are accompanied by changes in the stiffness of red blood cells. And while microfluidic devices capable of sorting blood cells by Keep reading
Amber Waves
When I was a teenager, I liked riding my bike along the river boardwalk near my house. There were fields there, like those in the image above and video below, Keep reading
Nestling Droplets
Pay attention after a rainfall, and you may notice beads of water gathering in the corners of a spider’s web or along the leaves of a cypress tree (bottom right). Keep reading