When swimming in open waters, it pays to keep your ducks (or your goslings!) in a row. A recent study examined the waves generated behind adult water fowl and found Keep reading
Tag: swimming
Benefits of Schooling
Though fluid dynamicists have long theorized about the hydrodynamic benefits of fish swimming in schools, nailing down the actual physics has been quite difficult. Fish rarely swim exactly as an Keep reading
Jellyfish Make Their Own Walls
When we walk, the ground’s resistance helps propel us. Similarly, flying or swimming near a surface is easier due to ground effect. Most of the time swimmers don’t get that Keep reading
Recreating Infinity
In the ocean, tiny organisms can migrate hundreds of meters through the water column. Recreating and tracking those journeys in a lab is quite a challenge, but it’s one the Keep reading
Artificial Microswimmers
Tiny organisms swim through a world much more viscous than ours. To do so, they swim asymmetrically, often using wave-like motions of tiny, hair-like cilia along their bodies. Mimicking this Keep reading
Audubon Photography Awards
Several of this year’s Audubon-Photography-Award-winning photos feature birds interacting with fluids. The Grand Prize Winner, by Joanna Lentini, features a diving double-crested cormorant. Like many other species, these cormorants launch Keep reading
Steering as a Boxfish
Coral reefs are full of odd-looking denizens, but one of the funniest-looking ones must be the boxfish. This family of fish lives up to its name; their bodies feature an Keep reading
Choosing Swimming Over Flight
When studying modern birds it quickly becomes apparent that they can either be good at swimming or at flying, but not at both. The characteristics that make wings good for Keep reading
Communication Between Microswimmers
The elongated cells of Spirostomum ambiguum swim using hair-like cilia, but when threatened, the cells contract violently, sending out long-range hydrodynamic waves, like those visualized above. Along with these waves, the Keep reading
Review: “How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls”
“An eight-year-old girl kicked her feet back and forth on the seat of a Long Island Railroad train. I beckoned her to cover over and pointed to the top of Keep reading