The interface where air and water meet is a special world of surface-tension-mediated interactions. Cereal lovers are well-aware of the Cheerios effect, where lightweight O’s tend to attract one another, Keep reading
Tag: surface tension
Predicting Droplet Sizes
Squeeze a bottle of cleaning spray, and the nozzle transforms a liquid jet into a spray of droplets. These droplets come in many sizes, and predicting them is difficult because Keep reading
“Chemical Somnia”
Under a macro lens, even a petri dish worth of fluids comes vividly to life. Here, artist Scott Portingale explores crystallization, Marangoni effects, and other phenomena alongside a haunting soundtrack Keep reading
Marangoni Blossoms
When surface tension varies along an interface, fluids move from regions of low surface tension to higher surface tension, a behavior known as the Marangoni effect. Here, a drop of Keep reading
Tweaking Coalescence
When a drop settles gently against a pool of the same liquid, it will coalesce. The process is not always a complete one, though; sometimes a smaller droplet breaks away Keep reading
Playing With Water in 2D Containers
Once again Steve Mould is putting his prototyping skills to use to work out what goes on inside tricky containers. Here he looks at a “magic” wizard’s cup where — Keep reading
Making Reconfigurable Liquid Circuits
Microfluidic circuits are key to “labs on a chip” used in medical diagnostics, inkjet printing, and basic research. Typically, channels in these circuits are printed or etched onto solid surfaces, Keep reading
Evolving Fingers
If you sandwich a viscous fluid between two plates and inject a less viscous fluid, you’ll get viscous fingers that spread and split as they grow. This research poster depicts Keep reading
“Color Show”
Brightly colored paints and inks mix and flow in artist Roman De Giuli’s “Color Show.” De Giuli typically creates this fluid art in thin layers atop paper. He’s a master Keep reading
Dendritic Painting Physics
In the art of Akiko Nakayama, colors branch and split in a tree-like pattern. In studying the process, researchers found the physics intersected art, soft matter mechanics, and statistical physics. Keep reading