In industry, tanks are often agitated or stirred to mix different elements. The goal is to create a laminar but chaotic flow field throughout the mixture. Introducing particles to such Keep reading
Tag: inertia
Droplet Collisions
When droplets collide, there are three basic outcomes: they bounce off one another; they coalesce into one big drop; or they coalesce and then separate. Which outcome we observe depends Keep reading
“Kusho”
Artist Shinichi Maruyama uses photography to freeze the transient motion of fluids into water sculptures. Inertia, gravity, and surface tension are at war in each piece. Plateau-Rayleigh instabilities break long Keep reading
The Archer Fish’s Arrows
The archer fish hunts by shooting a jet of water at insects in the leaves above and knocking them into the water. How the fish achieve this feat has been Keep reading
Astro Puffs
Microgravity continues to be a fascinating playground for observing surface tension effects on the macroscale without pesky gravity getting in the way. Here astronaut Don Pettit has created a sphere Keep reading
Drops Through Drops
The splashes from droplets impacting jets create truly mesmerizing liquid sculptures. Corrie White is one of the masters of this type of high-speed macro photography. Her work captures the instantaneous Keep reading
Sloshing Dynamics
[original media no longer available] Sloshing refers to the motion of a liquid inside a moving container, for example, in tanker trucks or inside a spacecraft’s fuel tank. The motion Keep reading
How Cats Drink
While humans use suction and dogs scoop water using their tongues*, cats use a dainty fluid mechanism to drink. Researchers used high-speed video to find that cats drink by touching Keep reading