Extreme weather events like floods, hurricanes, atmospheric rivers, heat waves, and droughts are increasingly discussed in terms of the effects of climate change. Because complex systems have complex causes, it’s Keep reading
Tag: numerical simulation
Leidenfrost Collapse
When a droplet encounters a surface much hotter than its boiling point, it forms a thin layer of vapor that insulates the liquid from the surface. But this Leidenfrost effect Keep reading
Fish Fins Work Together
Researchers studying how fish swim have long focused on their tail fins and the flows created there. But a fish’s other fins have important effects, too, as seen in this Keep reading
Lanes in Crowds
In nature — from atoms to human crowds — two groups moving in opposite directions often spontaneously organize into interwoven lanes flowing in their respective directions. Now researchers have built Keep reading
Gathering Safely
One effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is a renewed interest in the physics of disease transmission and what measures can protect us from airborne respiratory illnesses. This recent study looks Keep reading
Predicting Contamination in Urban Environs
The canyons of a city’s streets form a complex flow environment. To better understand the risks of a spreading contaminant, researchers simulated a release in lower Manhattan’s urban jungle. The Keep reading
A Bubble’s Path
Centuries ago, Leonardo da Vinci noticed something peculiar about bubbles rising through water. Small bubbles followed a straight path, but slightly larger ones swung back and forth or corkscrewed upward. Keep reading
The Chicxulub Impact’s Tsunami
66 million years ago an asteroid struck offshore of what is now Chicxulub near the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The impact and its aftermath are widely credited with a mass Keep reading
Exascale Simulations
Capturing what goes on inside a combustion engine is incredibly difficult. It’s a problem that depends on turbulent flow, chemistry, heat transfer, and more. To represent all of those aspects Keep reading
Slab Avalanche Physics
Slab avalanches like the one shown here begin after weak, porous layers of snow get buried by fresher, more cohesive snow layers. On a steep slope, the weight of the Keep reading