Hydrostatic pressure in a fluid is based on the fluid’s depth. You’ll rarely see a more dramatic example of that power than with a water release from a dam. Here Keep reading
Tag: pressure
A Primer on Blood Pressure
Some of the most important fluid dynamics goes on every moment inside our bodies. After only a few weeks of gestation, the human heart begins its lifelong task of pumping Keep reading
Self-Started Siphoning
Here’s a fun activity you can do while you #StayHome: build a self-starting siphon. Michael from VSauce explains how in this video. Moving fluids from one location to another is Keep reading
The Power of a Penguin’s Rectum
When brooding their eggs, penguins can rarely leave the nest, but answering nature’s call is still necessary. To keep the nest clean, Adélie penguins project their feces up to more Keep reading
Tranquilizer Darts in Slow Mo
Like most syringes, tranquilizer darts use pressure to drive flow. But where a typical syringe has that pressurization provided by a human driving the piston, tranquilizer darts must deploy without Keep reading
Boiling Water Using Ice Water
Steve Mould demonstrates a neat thermodynamic trick in this video by using ice water to boil hot water. The key to understanding this is recognizing that the boiling point of Keep reading
Plant Week: Bladderworts
Carnivorous plants live in nutrient-poor environments, where clever techniques are necessary to keep their prey from getting away. The aquatic bladderwort family nabs their prey through ultra-fast suction. This starts Keep reading
Hydraulics Make Spiders So Creepy
There’s something about the way spiders move that many of us find inherently creepy. And that something, it turns out, is fluid dynamical. Unlike humans and other vertebrates, spiders don’t Keep reading
How Trees Pull Water
Trees are incredible organisms, and the physics behind them baffled scientists until relatively recently. Inside trees, there is a constant flow of water up from the roots, through the xylem Keep reading
Under Pressure, Part 2
Our adventures with pressure continue after the trip to the aquarium. To see just how much pressure we could generate with height, A.J. and I teamed up with the Corvallis Keep reading