If you have to test the mechanics of an Oreo, what better fixture is there than an oreometer? Everyone has their preferred method for snacking on tasty Oreo cookies: twisting the two halves apart to eat the creme filling first, perhaps, before dunking the chocolate wafers in a glass of milk. But you may have […]
Enlarge / Image from a 2018 observational study of ballooning in large spiders depicting a crab spider just as it is about to take off. (credit: Cho, M. et al., 2018/CC BY-SA 4.0) In 1832, Charles Darwin witnessed hundreds of ballooning spiders landing on the HMS Beagle while some 60 miles offshore. Ballooning is a […]
Enlarge (credit: Wikipedia ) It’s a question I’m sure was keeping you up at night: can you make an object spin with a sound wave? The answer, generally speaking, used to be no. Now, though, mechanical engineers have taken a look at what their colleagues who play with lasers can do , and having seen […]
Enlarge (credit: Scott Weady ) You would think that understanding something as common as melting ice would be relatively easy. But water is a peculiar substance, and that makes it very hard to predict how ice will melt. A lot of that unpredictability has been attributed in order to water flowing around the ice (as […]
Slow-motion video of boiling ice, a research project of the Nature-Inspired Fluids and Interfaces Lab at Virginia Tech. Dash a few drops of water onto a very hot, sizzling skillet and they’ll levitate, sliding around the pan with wild abandon. Physicists at Virginia Tech have discovered that this can also be achieved by placing a […]
The shell of a water/glycerol gas marble (bubble) remains liquid and spherical even after 101 days, and it reacts as a liquid film when punctured. These human-made bubbles could be used to create stable foams. (credit: A. Roux et al., 2022) Blowing soap bubbles never fails to delight one’s inner child, perhaps because they are […]
Enlarge / The physics behind champagne’s bubbly delights is surprisingly complex—including the source of its distinctive crackling sound. (credit: Jon Bucklel/EMPICS/PA/Getty Images) There’s rarely time to write about every cool science-y story that comes our way. So this year, we’re once again running a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of posts, highlighting one science […]
Enlarge / Screengrab of Jesse Woolston’s latest piece, The Dynamics of Flow, debuting at Art Basel Miami Beach later this week. (credit: Jesse Woolston) Multimedia artist, composer, and sound designer Jesse Woolston has had a recurring dream for much of his life about encountering a black hole, “falling inward, and waking up terrified.” (Who wouldn’t wake […]
Dropping below the critical flow rate results in the wetting of the edge, and the telltale dribble of the teapot effect. Dropping below the critical flow rate results in the particular wetting of the edge, and the telltale dribble of typically the teapot effect. The dribbling of tea down the side of a teapot while […]
Enlarge / Experiments by Chinese physicists have shed further light on the intricate physics involving in skipping a stone across the water’s surface. Their findings revealed key factors that could influence spaceflight water landings after re-entry. (credit: Colin Anderson Productions / Getty Images) Learning how to skip stones across a lake or pond is a […]