Most of us are familiar with the classic example of a liquid-gas moving contact line on a solid surface: a raindrop, sheared by the wind, creeps along a glass windscreen. The contact line's movements depend on the interplay ...
Soft Matter
Jun 26, 2024
0
0
Imagine zooming in on a dried drop of salt solution—each pattern a unique masterpiece, reminiscent of abstract art, yet no larger than the size of a penny.
Analytical Chemistry
Jun 24, 2024
0
21
Disease-causing microbes have evolved sophisticated strategies for invading the body, flourishing in often hostile environments and evading immune defenses. In a new study, Professor Cheryl Nickerson, her Arizona State University ...
Cell & Microbiology
Jun 17, 2024
0
0
Magnesium compounds are a common ingredient of many remedies designed to help people wind down and escape the stresses of modern life. However, a new study has shown it is not only humans that are using forms of the chemical ...
Plants & Animals
Jun 14, 2024
0
67
In a study published in Nature Communications, collaborating physicists from Singapore and the UK have reported an optical analog of the Kármán vortex street (KVS). This optical KVS pulse reveals fascinating parallels between ...
Optics & Photonics
Jun 13, 2024
0
353
Blood, lymph fluid and other biological liquids can have surprising and sometimes troubling properties. Many of these biological solutions are non-Newtonian fluids, a type of liquid that is characterized by a non-linear relationship ...
Soft Matter
May 27, 2024
0
77
University of Michigan physicists have devised a way to manipulate active fluids, a type of fluid composed of individual units that can propel themselves independently, by taking advantage of topological defects in the fluids.
General Physics
May 22, 2024
0
155
A study now published in Nature Communications brings remarkable insights into the enigmatic behavior of supercritical fluids, a hybrid state of matter occupying a unique space between liquids and gases, and arising in domains ...
General Physics
May 22, 2024
0
18
From the rain drops rolling down your window, to the fluid running through a COVID rapid test, we cannot go a day without observing the world of fluid dynamics. Naturally, how liquids traverse across, and through, surfaces ...
Soft Matter
May 20, 2024
0
0
Scientific discovery doesn't always require a high-tech laboratory or a hefty budget. Many people have a first-rate lab right in their own homes—their kitchen.
General Physics
May 14, 2024
0
41
In physics, a fluid is a substance that continually deforms (flows) under an applied shear stress, no matter how small. Fluids are a subset of the phases of matter and include liquids, gases, plasmas and, to some extent, plastic solids.
In common usage, "fluid" is often used as a synonym for "liquid", with no implication that gas could also be present. For example, "brake fluid" is hydraulic oil and will not perform its required function if there is gas in it. This colloquial usage of the term is also common in medicine and in nutrition ("take plenty of fluids").
Liquids form a free surface (that is, a surface not created by the container) while gases do not. The distinction between solids and fluid is not entirely obvious. The distinction is made by evaluating the viscosity of the substance. Silly Putty can be considered to behave like a solid or a fluid, depending on the time period over which it is observed. It is best described as a viscoelastic fluid. There are many examples of substances proving difficult to classify. A particularly interesting one is pitch, as demonstrated in the pitch drop experiment currently running at the University of Queensland.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
