Spraying a surface clean with a jet of fluid can be an energy-intensive operation. But a recent experiment shows that pulsed flow — which creates vortex rings — could be Keep reading
Tag: porous media
Vietnam’s Emerald Isles
Vietnam’s Hạ Long Bay is home to more than 1,600 islands, many of them made up of mountainous limestone. The area is famous for its karst features, a type of Keep reading
Groundwater-Structure Interactions
Groundwater can sometimes wind up in unexpected places, given the way it interacts with subsurface structures. In this Practical Engineering video, Grady discusses the paths that groundwater takes around structures Keep reading
How Wells and Aquifers Work
When rain falls, some of that water turns into run-off in storm systems but much of it seeps into the ground. What happens to that water? In most places, it Keep reading
Beijing 2022: Sliding on Snow
Skiing and snowboarding events rely on the peculiar physics of sliding on snow. According to classical lubrication theory, that sliding shouldn’t be nearly as low in friction as what we Keep reading
Modelling Volcanic Bombs
When magma meets water on its journey to the surface, the two form a large, partially molten chunk known as a volcanic bomb. As you would expect from their name, Keep reading
Sandsculpting Bees
Building sandcastles is more than a pastime for the bumblebee-mimic digger bee. This species of bee collects water into an abdominal pouch, then uses it to wet sand to help Keep reading
Chaotic Mixing in Porous Media
One of the peculiar characteristics of viscous, laminar flows is that they are reversible. Squirt dye into glycerin, stir it one way, then the opposite direction, and the dye returns Keep reading
Inside Drying Wood
Wood must dry before it can be used in most applications, but with its complex internal structure exactly how wood dries out has been unclear. New experiments combining MRI and Keep reading
Permeable Pavement
Controlling storm water is a major challenge in urban environments, where many surfaces are impermeable. In a city, rain cannot simply soak into the ground and filter into the water Keep reading