Many industrial processes, including those producing aluminum and “green” hydrogen, use electrodes to speed up chemical reactions. Unfortunately, bubbles that form on the electrode reduce its efficiency anywhere from 10 Keep reading
Tag: nucleation
“Microscopic World”
So many natural processes take place right in front of us, but they’re too small and too fast to see. Here, the Beauty of Science team puts some of those Keep reading
Dancing Peanuts
Bartenders in Argentina sometimes entertain patrons by tossing a few peanuts into their beer. Initially, the peanuts sink, but after a few seconds they rise, wreathed in bubbles. Once on Keep reading
Cloud-Making Waves
As sea ice disappears in the Arctic Ocean, it leaves behind higher waves on the open water. These large waves help inject sea salt and organic matter into the atmosphere, Keep reading
Tapping a Can Won’t Save Your Beer
It happens to the best of us: sometimes our beer gets shaken up during transit. One common reaction to this is to tap the side of the can repeatedly before Keep reading
Supercooling Thermodynamics
In the latest Gastrofiscia episode, Tippe Top Physics takes on thermodynamics and the complicated truth behind certain phase changes. Although we’re accustomed to thinking of water freezing at 0 degrees Celsius and Keep reading
Exploding a Drop
Leidenfrost drops levitate over a hot substrate on a thin layer of their own vapor, constantly replenished as the drop evaporates. For the most part, previous studies have focused on Keep reading
Pyrocumulus on the Horizon
View this post on Instagram Time lapse of yesterday’s rare Pyrocumulus clouds churning high above the Idyllwild hellscape, bringing with them strong winds, the threat of lightning and turbulence that Keep reading
Creating Clouds
Despite their ubiquity and importance, we know surprisingly little about how clouds form. The broad strokes of the process are known, but the details remain somewhat fuzzy. One challenge is Keep reading
Drawing Up Dew
Desert plants have evolved to efficiently collect and capture whatever water they can. Each leaf of the moss Syntrichia caninervis ends in a hairlike fiber called an awn (seen in Keep reading