Leidenfrost drops slide almost frictionlessly on a layer of their own vapor, generated by extremely hot surfaces nearby. But in this experiment researchers recreated many of the classic behaviors of Keep reading
Tag: levitation
Levitating Cylinders by Lubrication
Here’s a surprising example of defying gravity: if you coat a vertical treadmill in oil, a cylinder held next to it will levitate! A new paper delves into the mathematics Keep reading
Floating in Levitating Liquids
When it comes to stability, nature can be amazingly counter-intuitive, as in this case of flotation on the underside of a levitating liquid. First things first: how is this liquid Keep reading
Hydrodynamic Bearings
If you twirl a glass syringe, it spins quite nicely, lubricated on a micron-thin layer of air. This is an example of a hydrodynamic bearing, a device where the viscosity Keep reading
Levitation Without Boiling
One way to levitate droplets is to place them on a surface heated much higher than the droplet’s boiling point. This creates the Leidenfrost effect, where a droplet levitates on Keep reading
Sonic Tractor Beam
Acoustic levitation uses the radiation forces generated by sound waves to trap small, lightweight particles at the nodes of standing waves. We’ve seen this a number of times previously, both Keep reading
A Groovy Hovercraft
Not long ago, researchers discovered that droplets hovering over a hot grooved surface would self-propel. The extension to this was to investigate a hovercraft on a grooved, porous surface (top Keep reading
Wheeling Drops
Leidenfrost drops – which skitter almost frictionlessly across extremely hot surfaces on a thin layer of their own vapor – are notoriously mobile. We’ve seen numerous methods of controlling their Keep reading
The Jumping Flea
Nearly every lab has a magnetic stirrer for mixing fluids, but this ubiquitous tool still holds some surprises, like its ability to unexpectedly levitate. Magnetic stirrers consist of two main Keep reading
Bouncing, Floating, and Jetting
Get inside some of the latest fluid dynamics research with the newest FYFD/JFM video. Here researchers discuss oil jets from citrus fruits, balls that can bounce off water, and self-propelled Keep reading