Not all microfluidic devices use tiny channels to pump and mix fluids. Some, like the Vortex Fluidic Device (VFD), conduct their microfluidic mixing in thin films of fluid. The VFD Keep reading
Tag: rotational flow
This Is Your Brain
The human brain, like an egg, consists of soft matter bathed in a fluid and encased in a hard shell. To better understand how our brains respond to sudden accelerations, Keep reading
Stratospheric Effects of Wildfires
Australia’s bushfires from earlier this year are offering new insights into how pyrocumulonimbus clouds can affect our stratosphere. A massive, uncontrolled blaze between December 29th and January 4th generated a 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
Enormous Ice Disk
We’ve seen spinning ice disks before, but this month Westbrook, Maine has developed the largest one I’ve ever seen. A research paper from 2016 indicates that this seemingly alien formation spins Keep reading
Vortex Dome
Are you staring into the eye of a hurricane or watching the spin of a simple desk toy? Part of the beauty of fluid dynamics is recognizing how similar they Keep reading
Coastal Upwelling
Cool temperatures and abundant nutrients make the waters off the western coast of North America especially biologically productive. This image is a composite of satellite data highlighting large phytoplankton blooms Keep reading
Suppressing Instability
The Rayleigh Taylor instability is a common fluid phenomenon in which the interface between fluids of differing densities becomes unstable. It’s what’s responsible for all those awesome pictures of milk Keep reading
Rotational Effects
Rotation can cause non-intuitive effects in fluid dynamical systems. UCLA Spinlab’s newest video tackles the problem using four demonstrations. The first two deal with droplets released in air, first in Keep reading
Pancake Vortex
In large-scale geophysical flows, rotation and density gradients often play major roles in the structures that form. Here the UCLA SPINLab demonstrates how large, essentially flat vortices–pancake vortices–form in rotating, Keep reading