One way to explore the effects of spinning liquids at high-speeds is to build an expensive and precise lab apparatus. Another method is to raid the Lego bin. Here, a Keep reading
Tag: rotating flow
The Tea Leaves Effect
If you’ve ever stirred a cup of tea with loose leaves in it, you’ve probably noticed that the leaves tend to swirl into the center of the cup in a Keep reading
Rotating Waves of Grains
Rotating drums are a popular way to explore granular dynamics. Here, researchers fill a cylinder (seen below) with heavy grains and a low-viscosity fluid, then rotate the mixture about a Keep reading
Spinning Off-Axis
To make a vortex in the laboratory, researchers typically set a tank on a rotating platform and allow the water to drain out a hole in the center of the Keep reading
Mixing the Immiscible
Immiscible liquids — like oil and water — do not combine easily. Typically, with enough effort, you can create an emulsion — a mixture formed from droplets of one liquid Keep reading
Taylor Columns
When rotating, fluids often act very differently than we expect. For example, an obstacle in a rotating flow will deflect flow around it at all heights. This is known as Keep reading
Centrifugal Instability
When it comes to geophysics, there are all kinds of phenomena that depend on rotation. In this short video, researchers demonstrate one such phenomena — the centrifugal instability — in Keep reading
Calimero’s Uprising!
Here on FYFD posts often focus on research results, with animations and images showing only a tiny portion of the apparatus necessary to conduct that work. But in this timelapse, Keep reading
Evaporative Convection
Since we spend so much of our lives around transparent fluids like air and water, we often miss seeing some of their coolest-looking flows. Here, we see a layer of Keep reading
Zones and Stars
Large-scale rotating flows, like planetary atmospheres, tend to organize themselves into zones. Within a zone, flow remains essentially in an east-west direction and serves as a barrier that keeps heat Keep reading