It's widely known that thick, viscous liquids—like honey—flow more slowly than low-viscosity liquids, like water. Researchers were surprised to find this behavior flipped on its head when the liquids flow through chemically ...
Soft Matter
Oct 16, 2020
3
607
A new kind of "phase transition" in water was first proposed 30 years ago in a study by researchers from Boston University. Because the transition has been predicted to occur at supercooled conditions, however, confirming ...
General Physics
Aug 19, 2022
2
1662
Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology achieved a 17-percent increase in boiling efficiency by using an acoustic field to enhance heat transfer. The acoustic field does this by efficiently removing vapor bubbles ...
Soft Matter
May 24, 2012
5
552
Brandon Jackson, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University, has created a new computational model of an electrospray thruster using ionic liquid ferrofluid—a promising technology ...
Soft Matter
Jul 11, 2017
1
1411
Skoltech researchers have theoretically predicted synchronization—a kind of self-regulation—in detonation waves. The discovery could help tame this inherently chaotic process so as to stabilize combustion in a rotating detonation ...
General Physics
Sep 28, 2022
0
549
In the quirky quantum world, particles can be affected by forces that they never directly encounter. A classic example is the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect, where electrons are affected by a magnetic field, despite not passing ...
Soft Matter
Apr 20, 2026
3
545
For over a hundred years, schoolchildren around the world have learned that ice melts when pressure and friction are applied. When you step out onto an icy pavement in winter, you can slip up because of the pressure exerted ...
General Physics
Sep 4, 2025
2
541
A team of researchers from Institut Langevin and Sorbonne Université has shown that it is possible to float boats on both the top and underside of a suspended fluid. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group ...
Computational simulations have been used to accurately predict airflow and droplet dispersal patterns in situations where COVID-19 might be spread. In the journal Physics of Fluids, results show the importance of the shape ...
Soft Matter
Dec 15, 2020
7
3241
The coffee-stain effect is a well-known effect in physics and daily life in which a dark-colored edge remains when a fluid containing particles evaporates. This is caused by an "avalanche" of particles moving to the outer ...
Soft Matter
Jul 3, 2020
3
515
