“What happens when two scientists, a composer, a cellist, and a planetarium animator make art?” The answer is “Dendritic,” a musical composition built directly on the tree-like branching patterns found Keep reading
Tag: viscous fingering
Branching Gels
If you sandwich a viscous fluid between two plates, then pull the plates apart, you’ll often get a complex branching pattern that forms as air pushes its way into the Keep reading
Fingers of Clay
Take a mixture of a viscous liquid – like clay mud – and squeeze it between two glass plates and you’ll create a mostly-round layer of liquid. As you pry Keep reading
Growing Fingers
Branching, tree-like structures are found throughout nature. Take a thin layer of a viscous fluid pressed between two glass plates and inject a less viscous fluid like air and you’ll Keep reading
Geological Flowers
These strange flower-like formations appear in a former limestone quarry in France. The black that you see is bitumen, or asphalt. These dendritic structures appear in spots where the rock Keep reading
“Kingdom of Colours”
Oil, paint, and soap combine to create a polychrome landscape in Thomas Blanchard’s “Kingdom of Colours” short film. Colorful droplets of paint coated in oil form anti-bubbles that skim along Keep reading
Fingering Under Elastic
Take a couple panes of glass and stick a viscous fluid in between them; you’ve now constructed what fluid dynamicists call a Hele-Shaw cell. If you inject a low-viscosity fluid, Keep reading
Fluid Fingers
Fluid phenomena can show up in unexpected places. The collage above shows patterns formed when an aluminum block is lifted during wet sanding, a polishing technique. The dendritic fingers are Keep reading
Viscous Fingers
Viscous fingers form between air and titanium dioxide sol-gel in this photograph. The two fluids are trapped in a thin gap between glass plates – a set-up known as a Keep reading
Viscous Fingers
Take a viscous fluid, like laundry detergent, and sandwich it between two plates of glass. Fluid dynamicists call this set-up a Hele-Shaw cell. If you then inject a less viscous Keep reading