The Venus flytrap snaps shut on its hapless prey by swelling cells in its leaves with water. Under the added pressure of a fly’s footstep, the leaves’ snapping instability triggers, Keep reading
Tag: polymer effects
Reader Question: Kinetic Sand
An inquiring reader wants to know: How does kinetic sand work to make it flow like a liquid? Thanks! – 3 Year Olds Everywhere I confess I don’t have any Keep reading
Storm Eyes and Mushrooms in a Drop
In industry, drying droplets often have many components: a liquid solvent, solid nanoparticles, and dissolved polymers. The concentration of that last component — the polymers — can have a big Keep reading
Studying Active Polymers Using Worms
I’ve covered some odd studies in my time, but this might be the strangest: to understand how active polymers affect viscosity, researchers loaded drunk worms into a rheometer. Active polymers Keep reading
Perfecting Giant Bubbles
Whether young or old, everyone enjoys blowing soap bubbles, and the bigger the bubble, the more impressive it is. Researchers have been on a quest to discover how bubbles can Keep reading
Making Giant Soap Bubbles
Making soap bubbles is fun, but there’s something about gigantic soap bubbles that brings out the child in everyone. The world’s largest freestanding soap bubble had more than 100 square meters of Keep reading
Viscoelasticity and Liquid Armor
One proposed method for improving bulletproof armor is adding a layer of non-Newtonian fluid that can help absorb and dissipate the kinetic energy of impact. Thus far researchers have focused Keep reading
Using Instabilities for Manufacturing
Manufacturing textured, flexible surfaces can be difficult, but researchers are exploring ways to use fluid dynamical instabilities to make the process easier. They begin with a pourable polymer mixture that Keep reading
Pressing Non-Newtonian Fluids
For many fluids, the relationship between force and deformation is not simple. The catch-all name for these materials is non-Newtonian fluids. In a recent episode, the Hydraulic Press Channel did Keep reading
Non-Newtonian Splashes
What happens when a stream of liquid falls through a screen? As the above video shows, water creates a beautiful flower-like burst of fluid when it hits a screen. Adding Keep reading