Browse Physics

A uniform stream of liquid can form one big drop or break up into many droplets. Experiments test the conditions that lead to breakup.

Paper pyramids hovering in an oscillating air column enlighten us about the stability of flying insects.

Salt crystallizing on walls or old artifacts forms in discrete bunches, rather than coating the surface, because of an unexpected feedback effect, according to experiments and simulations.

Observation of shallow water motion provides a remarkably good way to simulate the shock wave instabilities that occur in exploding stars.

Liquids that approach an often-quoted lower limit for viscosity are deemed “perfect,” but now this lower limit is itself being questioned.

Two new experiments on fluid turbulence have attained conditions needed to establish asymptotic scalings for turbulent transports of heat and angular momentum.

An improved version of a technique for folding tiny objects from a thin membrane uses a magnetic field to affect the shape. The membrane wraps around a droplet of fluid that distorts in response to the field.

A simple analytical model may explain what causes the lift forces that keep a flapping flag from drooping.

A conceptual framework that describes the fluidlike flow of dry granular materials also works for particles suspended in a liquid.

A feedback mechanism in an evaporating liquid produces a variety of complex yet controlled patterns.

A new electrostatic levitation study clarifies how the strings and clusters of atoms that appear in a cooling molten liquid affect diffusion.

Bubbles of hydrogen and oxygen burn spontaneously if they are small enough.

Magnetism may propel liquids in a pump without moving parts.

Ridges and dips provide control of how a drop of liquid, despite extreme mobility, moves on a very hot surface.

AFM experiments suggest the long lifetime of surface nanobubbles is due to a balanced influx and outflux of gas molecules.

The dramatic speed-up of fluid flow in a drying drop of a colloidal suspension controls the pattern of order and disorder in the particle stain that is left behind.

A rapidly expanding and collapsing microbubble in a fluid exerts forces strong enough to roll submerged particles stuck to a solid surface, which may explain how ultrasonic cleaning of jewelry and silicon wafers in a liquid removes dirt.

Objects could move through water without generating a wake if they are shrouded with a combination of porous materials and tiny pumps.

By swimming collectively, bacterial cells swim faster than they would in isolation.

Sometimes particles dispersed in a rotating fluid collect into a seemingly rigid filament structure. A new mathematical model explains this mysterious behavior, first observed 15 years ago.