What do paint, dishwasher detergent, ketchup and blood have in common? All are composed of particles suspended in a carrier liquid, flow when stirred or forced, but remain thick or even gel-like at rest.
Mosquitoes may have a reputation for being one of the world's most intractable pests, but they're actually quite tiny and fragile. So when an international team of scientists, including several at Virginia Tech, wanted to ...
For years, B. Ubbo Felderhof, a professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Germany's RWTH Aachen University, has explored the mechanisms that fish and microorganisms rely on to propel themselves. Flying birds and ...
As anyone who has experienced turbulence knows, its onset and departure are abrupt, and how long it lasts seems to be unpredictable. Fast flowing fluids are always turbulent, but at slower speeds the flow transitions to smooth ...
When a bunch of B. subtilis bacteria are confined within a droplet of water, a very strange thing happens. The chaotic motion of all those individual swimmers spontaneously organizes into a swirling vortex, with bacteria ...
For decades scientists have been trying to solve Feynman's Sprinkler Problem: How does a sprinkler running in reverse—in which the water flows into the device rather than out of it—work? Through a series of experiments, ...
Scientists from Hiroshima University undertook a study of dragonfly wings in order to better understand the relationship between a corrugated wing structure and vortex motions. They discovered that corrugated wings exhibit ...
Pop the top off a can of mixed nuts and, chances are, Brazil nuts will be at the top. This phenomenon, of large particles tending to rise to the top of mixtures while small particles tend to sink down, is popularly known ...
If you've ever eaten food while upside down - and who hasn't indulged this chimpanzee daydream? - you can thank the successive wave-like motions of peristalsis for keeping the chewed bolus down and ferrying it into your stomach. ...
Swimming in a pool of syrup would be difficult for most people, but for bacteria like E. coli, it's easier than swimming in water. Scientists have known for decades that these cells move faster and farther in viscoelastic ...
