In this video, Steve Mould tackles a question many of us have likely wondered: just why does falling water make this chain-like shape? When pouring from a slit-like orifice, water Keep reading
Tag: instability
Dengue Dengue Dengue
Musical duo Dengue Dengue Dengue create live audio/visual performances with fluid dynamics. Their visuals are created by adding various liquids and dyes atop an illuminated background. To add extra dynamism, Keep reading
Granular Fingers
Finger-like shapes often form on fluids injected between glass plates, but what happens when that injected fluid contains particles? That’s the situation in this recent study, where researchers sandwiched a Keep reading
Centrifugal Instability
When it comes to geophysics, there are all kinds of phenomena that depend on rotation. In this short video, researchers demonstrate one such phenomena — the centrifugal instability — in Keep reading
Dendritic
“What happens when two scientists, a composer, a cellist, and a planetarium animator make art?” The answer is “Dendritic,” a musical composition built directly on the tree-like branching patterns found Keep reading
Branching Gels
If you sandwich a viscous fluid between two plates, then pull the plates apart, you’ll often get a complex branching pattern that forms as air pushes its way into the Keep reading
Traffic Flow and Phantom Jams
We’ve all experienced the frustration of traffic jams that seem to come from nowhere — standstills that occur with no accident, construction, or obstacle in sight. Traffic shares a lot Keep reading
Mimicking Supernovas
The Hubble archives are full of incredible swirls of cosmic gas and dust, many of which were born in supernovas. Predicting the forms these massive explosions will generate is extremely Keep reading
Dissolving Caramel
In nature, erosion patterns are driven by the interactions of flow and topography. Here, researchers study that process in the lab by placing an inclined block of caramel in quiescent Keep reading
Marangoni Bursting
Placing a mixture of alcohol and water atop a pool of oil creates a stunning effect that pulls droplets apart. The action is driven by the Marangoni effect, where variations Keep reading