For more than a century, scientists have been fascinated by the jet that forms after a drop impacts a liquid. In this study, researchers tracked fluorescent particles in the fluid Keep reading
Tag: particle image velocimetry
Snowflake Velocimetry
In our era of remote learning, students don’t always have a chance to do hands-on lab experiments in the usual fashion. But that doesn’t mean they can’t explore important flow Keep reading
Phytoplankton Swirl
View this post on Instagram Every summer, phytoplankton spread across the northern basins of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, with blooms spanning hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers. One Keep reading
Visualizing Flow with Snowfall
One of the challenges in engineering and operating wind turbines is that full-scale turbines rarely behave as predicted in smaller-scale laboratory experiments and simulations. One way to reconcile these differences Keep reading
Laser Goggles for Parrotlets
Many experimental techniques in fluid dynamics use lasers. One such technique, particle image velocimetry (PIV), introduces tiny particles into the flow and uses a laser to illuminate the particles. By Keep reading
Flying with Large Ears
Evolution often requires compromise between competing effects. Large-eared bats, for example, rely on the size of their ears to aid their echolocation, but such large ears can hurt them aerodynamically, Keep reading
Measuring Wind Turbines with Snowfall
One of the challenges in large-scale wind energy is that operating wind turbines do not behave exactly as predicted by simulation or wind tunnel experiments. To determine where our models Keep reading
Reader Question: Does Flow Viz Alter Flow?
Reader gorbax asks: I’ve been wondering for a while, actually, how do we know when the method of flow visualization doesn’t actually alter the flow of a fluid itself? This Keep reading
Reader Question: How Useful is Flow Viz?
Reader Andrew asks: I’ve noticed you’ve posted a bunch of flow visualization/wind tunnel content. I’m just curious where how useful information is obtained from these. Is it just observation? Or Keep reading
How Maple Seeds Fly
Maple tree seeds flutter and spin as they descend. The above video, which shows flow visualization of a freely falling seed, demonstrates that the so-called helicopter seed’s autorotation creates a vortex Keep reading