A lot can happen to a drop. That becomes evident as one reads this study, and even more evident if and as one tried to replicate the study: “Controlled Uniform Coating from the Interplay of Marangoni Flows and Surface-Adsorbed Macromolecules,” Hyoungsoo Kim, François Boulogne, Eujin Um, Ian Jacobi, Ernie Button, and Howard A. Stone, Physical […]
Some things can remind you about almost everything. (Jane Siberry demonstrated this with her song “Everything reminds me of my dog.”) Some ideas can explain specific physical patterns—patterns you can see around you if you start looking for them, patterns you can try to measure and ruthlessly compare with each other. And some of those […]
Can a cat be both a solid and a liquid? A physics paper explores this question, using a special number called the “Deborah number”. We explore that physics paper, in this week’s Improbable Research podcast. SUBSCRIBE on Play.it, iTunes, or Spotify to get a new episode every week, free. This week, Marc Abrahams teams up with fluid dynamicist Nicole Sharp, creator of FYFD, the […]
Elephants are big, and they get hot. Especially in Africa. Thus, from the elephant’s point of view, there’s sometimes an urgent necessity to dissipate excess heat. Some investigators have suggested that flapping their large ears (strictly, their ‘pinnae’) could provide a significant heat-loss mechanism. (e.g. Buss, I. O., and Estes, J. A., 1971, ‘The Functional […]
