Power plants (and other industrial settings) often need to cool water to control plant temperatures. This usually requires cooling towers like the iconic curved towers seen at nuclear power plants. Keep reading
Tag: thermodynamics
Feeding Hurricanes
With the strong hurricane season pummeling the southern U.S. this year, you may have heard comments about how warm oceans are intensifying hurricanes. Let’s take a look at how this Keep reading
An Exoplanet With Earth-Like Temperatures
Although researchers have identified thousands of exoplanets in the last 25 years, most of them are far larger and far hotter than Earth. But a team recently announced the discovery Keep reading
How a Storm Can Ruin Your Tea
Last November, a windstorm, known as Storm Ciarán in the U.K., blew through Europe with wind speeds as high as 130 kilometers per hour. All that wind came with a Keep reading
Recycling Urban Heat
In urban areas, buildings and concrete surfaces create a heat effect that can make temperatures in the city substantially higher than in nearby rural areas. That heat isn’t just above Keep reading
A Levitated Boil
When acoustically levitated, objects tend to clump together and move like a single, large solid. But researchers found more fluid-like states for their levitated particles when the particles were smaller. Keep reading
Leidenfrost On Ice
We’ve seen many forms of Leidenfrost effect — that wild, near-frictionless glide that liquid droplets make on a very hot surface — over the years, but here’s a new one: Keep reading
Tricking a Kettle
Electric kettles are designed to shut off when the water inside them boils. But what does that mean exactly? In this video, Steve Mould explores that question by trying to Keep reading
Inside a Super-Earth
When studying exoplanets, scientists often judge habitability by the possibility of liquid water on the planet’s surface. But there is more to Earth’s habitability than water. The liquid iron dynamo Keep reading
Viscosity and Quantum Mechanics
Viscosity describes a fluid’s resistance to changing its shape. Like surface tension, it’s a fundamental property of a fluid that comes from the interactions between molecules. But viscosity is a Keep reading