If you sandwich a viscous fluid between two plates and inject a less viscous fluid, you’ll get viscous fingers that spread and split as they grow. This research poster depicts Keep reading
Tag: non-Newtonian fluids
Dendritic Painting Physics
In the art of Akiko Nakayama, colors branch and split in a tree-like pattern. In studying the process, researchers found the physics intersected art, soft matter mechanics, and statistical physics. Keep reading
A Toad’s Sticky Saliva
Frogs and toads shoot out their tongues to capture and envelop their prey in a fraction of a second. They owe their success in this area to two features: the Keep reading
Beijing 2022: Why Are Ice and Snow Slippery?
Although every Olympic winter sport relies on the slippery nature of snow and ice, exactly why those substances are so slippery has been an enduring mystery. Michael Faraday hypothesized in the nineteenth century that Keep reading
Solid, Liquid, Both?
Materials like oobleck — a suspension of cornstarch particles in water — are tough to classify. In some circumstances, they behave like a fluid, but in others, they act like Keep reading
Microjets and Needle-Free Injection
Some people don’t mind needles, and others absolutely detest them. But to replace needles with needle-free injections, we have to understand how high-speed microjets pass through skin. Given skin’s opacity, Keep reading
Inside Old-Fashioned Butter
Today’s video is a little different: it’s an inside look at a butter-making shop in France that uses traditional nineteenth-century methods to process the butter. Watching workers fold and shape Keep reading
Viscoelastic Coiling
Drizzle honey or syrup from high enough, and you’ll see it coil like a liquid rope. This feature of viscous fluids also extends to polymer-filled viscoelastic fluids. But recent work Keep reading
Aging Fluids
If you’ve ever left a sealed container of Playdoh untouched for months, you know that there’s a big difference between the fresh stuff and what’s left in that can. Aging Keep reading
Sundews Weaponize Viscoelasticity
In nutrient-poor soils, carnivorous plants like the cape sundew supplement their diets by eating insects. To entice their prey, the cape sundew secretes droplets of sugary water. But unwary insects Keep reading