Physics - Blog Posts

This is what happens when a carrot is fired at 300 km/hour at an egg, through two sheets of cardboard. 

This is what happens if you separate out the two sheets:

The egg survives! This shows how a Whipple shield works, and is what spacecraft use to protect themselves from micrometeoroid impacts in space. When the projectile (in this case a carrot, but in space it could be a speck of paint, a piece of an old satellite, or a bit of space rock) hits the first layer, it’s moving so fast that it starts to vaporise, because the energy of the collision is enough to break almost every bond in the substance.

It then sprays outwards, spreading the force of impact across a much wider area, meaning the second layer can stop it going any further, keeping your egg (or astronauts) safe.

Watch the full video on our YouTube channel.

Curves of constant width

                                                    Source

The width of a circle is constant: its diameter.

But the circle is not the only shape that holds this pristine title. For instance let’s look at the Reuleaux triangle

Reuleaux triangle

A Reuleaux triangle is a shape formed from the intersection of three circular disks, each having its center on the boundary of the other two.

The Reuleaux triangle is the first of a sequence of Reuleaux polygons, curves of constant width formed from regular polygons with an odd number of sides.

Some of these curves have been used as the shapes of coins

To drill square holes.

They are not entirely square, their edges are fillets i.e the edges are rounded and not sharp.

This animation offers a good insight as to why that is so.

And in china, apparently on bicycles.

The man Guan Baihua shows his self-made multi-angle-wheel bicycle on May 6, 2009 in Qingdao of Shandong Province, China. Guan Baihua spent 18 months to complete this strange bicycle.

Other shapes of constant width

There are other shapes of constant width beside the Reuleaux triangle ( that has been discussed in this post ), a whole bunch of them really. Do take a look at them. ( links below )

I will leave you guys with my favorite one.

More:

If this post fascinated you, i strongly suggest you check these out. They go in-depth with the mathematics that underlies these curves and talk about other cool stuff:

An animation of non-circular rollers

Shapes and Solids of Constant Width - Numberphile  

Shapes of constant width

Reuleaux Polygons,           

Edit:

For those who are wondering if these are something that one would stumble upon on a regular basis. You may not find perfect ones but similiar ones definitely.

I found mine on a really old BMI calculator thingy. ( not sure what you would call it )

Have fun exploring !

Entanglement Made Simple, a divulgative article of theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek, in Quanta Magazine.

Image by James O'Brien for Quanta Magazine

Photographer Florent Tanet’s precarious (non-photoshopped) ‘equilibrium’ series

Ep. 30 Coriolis Effect - HD and the Void

The Coriolis force is a force in physics that has profound impact on us here on Earth. Listen to hear how this apparent force has influence over the weather, tides, and even some creatures. I refuse to talk about the formulas surrounding it but I ...

We’re back in 2019 with an episode that would have been more appropriate to release during hurricane season: a discussion of the Coriolis force! This force was observed centuries ago but takes its name from the scientist who first considered it in terms of theory and physics. It has an impact on a vast range of natural phenomena, from weather patterns to ocean waves to the flights of flies and moths.

Below the cut are the glossary, transcript, a timeline of the people I mention, sources, and music credits. Send me any topic suggestions via Tumblr message (you don’t need an account to do this, just submit as anonymous). You can also tweet at me on Twitter at @HDandtheVoid, or you can ask me to my face if you know me in real life. Subscribe on iTunes to get the new episodes of my so-far-monthly-updated podcast, and please please please rate and review it. Go ahead and tell friends if you think they’d like to hear it, too!

(My thoughts on the next episode are Stephen Hawking, Hedy Lamarr, or famous comets. The next episode will go up in late February.)

Glossary

Coriolis force - a force in a rotating system that acts perpendicular to the direction of motion and to the axis of rotation. On Earth, this tends to deflect moving objects to the right in the Northern Hemisphere and to the left in the Southern Hemisphere.

Ekman transport - the net motion of fluid that results from the balance between Coriolis and turbulent drag forces.

Eötvös effect - the change in perceived gravitational force that results from eastbound or westbound movement on Earth’s surface.

Kelvin waves - an ocean wave that is trapped at the Earth’s equator and along vertical boundaries like coastlines. They move towards the equator when they have a western boundary; towards the poles when they have an eastern boundary; and make a whirlpool when they have a closed boundary, moving counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere.

Lagrange points -  five points where three bodies can orbit each other, yet stay in the same position relative to each other in a stable configuration. L1-L3 are in line with each other, while L4 and L5 are at the points of equilateral triangles in the configuration.

prograde - when a planet spins from east to west.

Rossby number - used to determine the relative importance of the centrifugal and Coriolis forces in maps of weather patterns. A small Rossby number indicates that a weather system is strongly affected by Coriolis forces, while a large Rossby number signifies that a system is affected by inertial and centrifugal forces.

Transcript

Timeline

Giovanni Battista Riccioli, Italian (1598-1671)

Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Italian (1618-63)

Joseph-Louis Lagrange, French (1736-1813)

Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis, French (1792-1843)

Sir William Thompson, AKA Lord Kelvin, Scots-Irish (1824-1907)

Baron Loránd Eötvös de Vásárosnamény, Hungarian (1848-1919)

Ottokar Tumlirz, Austrian (1856-1928)

Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian (1861-1930)

Vagn Walfrid Ekman, Swedish (1874-1954)

Carl-Gustaf Arvid Rossby, Swedish-born American (1898-1957)

Sources

Coriolis Effect via the University of Oregon

Coriolis Force via Wikipedia

Coriolis effect, two centuries before Coriolis via Physics Today (Aug 2011)

Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis via Wikipedia

Coriolis effect via National Geographic

Hurricane, cyclone, typhoon, tornado – what’s the difference? via African Reporter (Sep 2017)

Wang, B. Kelvin Waves. University of Hawaii: Honolulu, 2002.

Ocean in Motion: Ekman Transport Background via NASA

Ekman transport via Wikipedia

What is a Geodesist? via Environmental Science

“The Second Coming” by W. B. Yeats via Poetry Foundation

Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity

Filler Music: ‘Ambergris’ by Tipper off their EP Fathoms

Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught

STEM fields all mapped out!

Physicist and science writer Dominic Walliman produces the YouTube channel Domain of Science where he shares fantastic animations that map out different STEM fields.

These videos are perfect to share with students to give them a comprehensive view with information about different types of sub-disciplines within fields and how they relate to each other.

I've embedded the Map of Mathematics video below for you but if you click on it and watch the video on YouTube you'll find the playlist which shares other videos on the topics of engineering, biology, physics, chemistry, and more.

And of course he has shared a lot of other great content on his channel. You should view, subscribe, and share ASAP!

Dominic has made the images of maps available via Flickr for educational use and you can purchase Domain of Science posters as well.

Watch on YouTube to view the whole playlist

3/14  Pi Day, School Walkout, Stephen Hawking, and more

A lot happening today!  I just wanted to post a couple of updates and thoughts...  

Before I had breakfast this morning I heard the word that Stephen Hawking had passed away.  What an amazing human being, such an incredible loss for the world.  And what an amazing coincidence for him to die on Einstein’s birthday...

Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking Taught Us a Lot About How to Live (NYT)

Stephen Hawking Dies at 76; His Mind Roamed the Cosmos (NYT Obituary)

Stephen Hawking: Visionary physicist dies aged 76 (BBC)

This is the most dangerous time for our planet (Stephen Hawking 12/16)

Stephen Hawking Was Right To Worry About Our Impending Doom (io9)

Stephen Hawking’s most mind-blowing discovery: black holes can shrink:   Hawking radiation, explained by a physicist. (Vox)

Stephen Hawking’s 5 best and nerdiest pop culture cameos:  When Hawking wasn’t changing the world, he played himself on TV. He was hilarious. (Vox)

Pi Day

I always look forward to Pi Day...  friends usually send me Pi Day pictures and animated gifs...  I wore my new Pi shirt to PT today and I’ve finally updated my Pi Page :)  You can also check out my new Flickr post on Pi Day...

School Walkout

These two photos from the 17 photos from today's National School Walkout for gun control that should terrify the NRA are my favorite:

#NationalWalkoutDay on Twitter

Previous post on tumblr about gun violence

the one with the brains

8 / 1 / 2018 //

Tomorrow I start my finals month and let’s just say physics midterm isn’t really the thing I want to start off with. but this is my life/desk situation right now, flooded with tons of formulas that just won’t go in my head easily:(

Hi ! Since a friend asked me for some tips to study better, I thought that it would be a good idea to share them with you all !

First of all, I started to have really good grades only once I started to apply exactly what is on this list ! On the beginning of the last year I had grades that went around 15/20 (French scholar system works with grades on 20, not on 100), which was good but I wasn’t the first of my class at all, and then in the end of the year and even right now, I have an average of 17/20 (without P.E obviously lmao), which is considered extremely good as a scientific senior student here !

Anyway I think that most of those tips are already well known but maybe you’ll find things that you didn’t think would work but actually do !

1- Do all of your homework (if possible)

This is some basic tip but God knows that it is the most important thing ever. Practice makes perfect, and I KNOW that sometimes you’ll be too tired to calculate the weight of a satellite which turns around the Earth in 239 days but even if you don’t feel like writing it down, just try to think about it, to find the methodology to do this exercise, because you have high chances to have this exercise again during your test ! Which lead us to the next advice…

2- Always write down the correction of your exercises when your teacher corrects them in class

Well I do think that it is the most important thing that I didn’t do last year and that I do now and it helps me so much. Like I said earlier, in maths, physics, literature and so on, there’s always a methodology that works almost universally for each type of exercise. So you have to listen carefully in class and take notes in case you didn’t understand something that might be important, and even after writing the methods and the corrections you don’t know what to do…

3- Ask a professor or a friend, or check videos on YouTube if this is still blurry in your mind

WE DON’T REPEAT THIS OFTEN ENOUGH BUT YOUR PROFESSORS ARE HERE AND PAID TO HELP YOU ! Even if you don’t like them, if you want to understand a subject you have to ask someone who could explain it to you ! If you’re in college and asking a teacher is not possible, then ask a friend you know they can explain it to you ! Don’t be ashamed of not understanding, this is absolutely natural. Then, if you still don’t understand, maybe you’ll find the answer to your question at our dear friend Google or even better, on YouTube ! Personally I think that Khan Academy is absolutely great for sciences ! Also I don’t really know about american YouTube channels that focus on school, so it’s up to you to find a channel that suits you ! (For my frenchies passant par là Les bons profs et Yvan Monka mes sauveurs).

4- Do not spend time uselessly !!!

Dear God how much time I spent on Twitter and YouTube just REFRESHING FOR NOTHING knowing that I have a test the next day 😭 I realized how much time Twitter would take me each day during the summer holidays so I decided to « delete » my account (I just log in once in a while so my tweets stay here, I don’t want to loose my threads on the Attack Titan and Hanji Zoe).

I also decided this year that once I’m home after school, I’ll just use my phone while I’m eating something and then leave it in the kitchen, and NOT USE IT until I finished all of my homework, even if it’s 10pm and half of my friends sent me a text about interesting things ! Also OBVIOUSLY no Netflix and series and anime once I’m done, but…

5- Don’t overwork yourself

If your studies are your priority like me, then you’ll put your homework before your activities, or even your sleep, because you’d feel guilty or even more stressed because you didn’t learn everything you had to and your test is the next day. Until now I can sleep at 1am and wake up the next day at 6 if I didn’t learn everything, and do that all the week until I have nothing to learn (this is an extremely rare case).

DO NOT DO THAT ALL THE TIME

You can allow you to do that when it’s a really important test, but if this is a really quick vocabulary test, then you should prioritize your sleep ! Then, if you’re really in deep shit you can learn on your way to school (flashcards yayy)! Sometimes when you’re really in a hurry your brain can memorize things so much faster I swear ! But of course, if you want to not do that all the time you have to be really organized, so next tip is…

6- Organize your week if you can !

This is so important to do that omg ! This is the newest thing I’ve been doing and it helps me sooooooooooo much omg ! Personally I have a bullet journal in which I organize what I’ll do each day, and (evenifthosedaysicompletelylostmybalance) now I can find some time for me to draw or just to sleep a bit more lol.

Make To-Do lists, have your own Bujo, just write down everything you have to do this week on your phone, at least you know you won’t miss something that might be important, and in the long run, you’ll find more time to learn your lessons and to do more exercises, and at the end of the semester you’ll have better grades ! But of course this is a question of MOTIVATION !

7- Last but not least, find a way to motivate you !

I think that if you want better grades, that’s for a reason after all ! Then if you’re feeling too lazy to work, just think about the reason that motivates you to go to class and to learn your lessons !

Making your parents proud, doing the job of your dreams, having a lot of money maybe, I don’t know what motivated you to read this post so far but just think about the pride you’ll have when receiving a 98/100! Then you’ll be able to help your friends with the subject you used to struggle with, and btw this is truly a wonderful feeling to graduate with all of your friends ! After that, the reward of holidays will be such a delightful thing 💕

This is all for now ! I might update this post if I remember something that I missed ! Also I’m really sorry if my English is awful, it’s been a while since I truly practiced it !

Just remember that even if you are in the top, intelligence doesn’t do all of the work and this is a progressive work that will help you getting even better results !

Edit: omgggg thank you so much for all those notes💕💕💕 ! I’d never imagine that this post would be this helpful !! I’m kind of curious about how much those tips helped you during the semester ! So if you think you see a progression do not hesitate to hit me up or leave a comment !

Physicists: the words we are using to define terms have specific mathematical definitions, so it’s important to use the correct words to talk about the correct quantity

Also physicists: Hahaha, luminous intensity isn’t an intensity, luminous flux isn’t a flux, and optical power isn’t a power!

the physics students

as requested by the wonderful @starferns

the chalkboard at the front of the lecture hall, covered in equations and graphs

visualizing a problem in your mind, step by step

cold water with ice cubes and a slice of lemon

diagrams drawn hastily on the corner of your paper, scribbled lines and half formed thoughts

replicating famous experiments and demonstrations

watching youtube videos late at night, picking apart complex theories

having an instinct for force diagrams and direction of motion

rushed, messy handwriting

finding beauty in motion and calculation and precision

seeing the universe as unimaginably small and unimaginably large at the same time

a well-worn grey sweater, frayed a little at the sleeves

equations scribbled on your arm until you know them by heart

studying newton and meitner and plank, all those who went before

talking with your hands, forming the shapes of arcs and trajectories as you work through a problem

long hallways and cold, sunny days

late night study groups

staring up at the sky, knowing exactly why and how the planets move as they do

trying einstein’s thought experiments

an old grandfather clock, pendulum measuring the passage of time

pages filled with calculations and precise strings of digits

Day 13/100 of productivity · 1/30/21

Some late night notes for today! My boyfriend fell asleep really early and I had nothing better to do, so I decided it was time to study a little bit more. I feel like my motivation has been really high again lately & I am thankful for that, it would be really difficult to be this busy if I wasn't motivated.

Learning to like Physics

I actually cannot believe how much I used to hate Physics until last year, but then I actually took the time and effort to understand it and?? it’s so cool and fun and easy?? unreal.

It literally seemed impossible for me and I legit thought I wouldn’t be able to graduate because I was never gonna pass Physics (I’m a Math major so we actually have 4 required Physics courses). I don’t know what the point of this is but, don’t be afraid of Physics guys!! (or any other subject!!) yes it’s frustrating as hell and you feel dumb for not having a clue about what is happening or how to work out the problems but I swear once it clicks for you (and it will) it’s gonna be great.

So if anyone needs a step by step (for college/uni), here’s one:

Google is your best friend, the internet has plenty of videos/papers/worked out problems for you to check out. The most important thing to look for is drawings and videos that help you visualize what’s going on. In most of general physics, the key is to see what forces are acting, and from that follows everything else.

Know your core equations. Honestly it’s always the same ones in the end.

For mechanics: you absolutely gotta know Newton’s Laws, Work and its relation to Kinetic/Potential Energy. Momentum is also important.

For thermodynamics: pV = nRT, Boyle/Gay Lussac etc (note that they’re all connected), Carnot’s Cycle.

For electromagnetism: Maxwell’s equations. This is as far as I’ve gotten in my studies.

Understand where the formulas come from, rather than learning them by heart. For me, this was necessary because my memory is absolutely shit so there was no way I could remember every variation. But most of the formulas actually do make sense, and once you’ve drawn out a diagram of what’s happening, you can work them out yourself.

For the previous point, I suggest you watch and rewatch your professor’s explanation until you get the gist. Don’t get discouraged if it’s not immediately crystal clear, seek out other explanations if you need to. Then try to do it yourself.

ASK. FOR. HELP. I cannot stress this enough, do not feel ashamed about asking questions in class or during office hours. There are no stupid questions, and you’re paying thousands every year for people to teach you. Also physics is hard, so you’re pretty much expected to not understand immediately. Moreover, I can guarantee there’s at least one other person in the room with the same question who’s too afraid to ask. I was that person, and I failed the class because of it. Don’t be me.

Practice until you’re able to do most variations of standard problems. Once you’re able to do a certain problem, try to change it and see what happens. You don’t have to crunch the numbers all over again, go with your intuition first. Then you can calculate everything and see if you were correct.

This is all I’ve got at the moment. It applies to General Physics because I’m still pretty shit at Mathematical Physics (Rational Mechanics?) lmao, which is why I don’t talk about Lagrangians and such here.

If anyone has any other tips (for Mathematical Physics as well!) , please feel free to add them. Note that I’m from Italy, and this is what it was like for me. Other countries might have different ways of testing or focus on some formulas that I haven’t included. Do what works for you, obviously.

Good luck STEM students, I know it’s hard, but hopefully worth it in the long run :)

january 12, 2020

for the past 2ish weeks ive been in the protoproto stages of starting physics research with a professor :') the first steps of course are understanding special relativity and finding a suitable journal to put it all in 🌌

problem solving tips that actually worked for me

Hey there!

If you have a math, or science related subject (like I always do), you’ll find that you really can’t escape analysis and problem solving, especially if you’re majoring in something science or maths related. So I am here to share some tips that actually made studying technical subjects a little bit easier and manageable for me in college:

Practice solving. If you have a subject that requires you to solve, you really have to practice solving, there is no easy way out of this one. This allows you to develop your own technique in solving the problem. You can start by doing the problems you did in class, then venture out to some examples in textbooks, then further into the problems in the textbooks until you get the hang of how the concepts and theories are applied. 

Listen during class. I know, it’s boring. But you have to do this. This way, you’ll be able to understand the topic once it is presented to you. In my opinion, it’s better if you let an expert explain it because they know the important bits in the lesson. Then study it afterwards on your own to develop your own techniques.

Ask your professors. Don’t be afraid to ask questions in class. Or if you’re shy, you can ask them after the class. However, it’s important that you ask them about the lesson when you already did your part; meaning: you already studied the material/solution over and over again but there’s just something that you can’t seem to grasp. 

Study before the class. Studying the lesson in advance doesn’t hurt. Plus, it works because you already have an idea about it. However, I don’t do it usually. What I do is that prior the discussion, I study the lessons that are going to be essential to the next topic. Example: Say that our topic later will be about introduction to thermodynamics (which includes derivation of various thermodynamic formulas); what I’m going to study instead is the different integration and derivation techniques, and different basic thermodynamics concepts like laws of thermodynamics. This ensures me that I know the prerequisite lessons of the next topic in class.

Absorb the conceptual parts of the topic first. Before diving into the problems itself, try to digest the concepts or theories behind it first. This way, you can understand which information is important and easily think of a solution because you know the problem’s framework. Even when your professor gives you a problem that seems different from your other sample problems, the concepts will still be the same throughout.

Reverse engineer the solution. Reverse engineering is reading and understanding your solution from bottom to top. I do this to make connections while going through the solution. I usually ask myself “‘where did this come from?’, ‘why did this happen?’, or ‘why is the answer like this?’” It allows me to look into the parts that I missed which are usually concepts or theories that I forgot to apply in solving the problem.

Look for key terms or phrases. There are some problems that put in information that may seem unimportant, but actually is really important. Examples such as the phrases constant velocity, constant acceleration, starting from rest, accelerate uniformly, reversible isothermal, adiabatic conditions, isobaric/isochoric compression/expansion, etc., are easy to miss but actually gives you vital information especially when solving a problem.

Try to ask yourself how or why it happened in every step of the solution. You can do this to gauge your mastery of the lesson. If you can answer yourself confidently, then you’ve studied well enough. But, if you can’t or if you feel that it’s not enough, then you better get your pen, paper, and calculator to practice some more.

If you have to draw it, draw it. Some problems need the use of your imagination, and these problems are the ones that get tricky most of the time. It’s easier to draw each of the time frames that are important so you get the sense of what’s going on between these pictures. This way, you’ll know which information you’re missing and which ones are you failing to take into account.

It’s okay to be messy and slow while practicing. Not all of time you can solve in a tumblr-esque manner because, dude, tumblr notes or solutions are soooo pretty to look at, BUT, what’s more important is that you understand each step of the solution and how the answer came to be 8.0658 m/s directed 32° south of west. So it’s okay to have dashes, strikethroughs, and crosses on your scratch paper, as long as you’re learning, a messy solution on a paper you’re not going to submit to your professor is fine.

IF YOU’VE REALLY GOTTEN THE HANG OF SOLVING IT, try to solve a fresh set of problems as fast and accurately as you can. Try to solve as if you’re in an exam. This is also to gauge how well you’re prepared for it, but you need to do this accurately. I repeat, accurately. It doesn’t work if you’ve finished it in less than an hour but all of your answers are wrong.

Rest. If you know that you’ve done a good job, then take your mind off of everything first and let it wander to wherever it wants to wander. You deserve it ✨

whats cool is that physics literally governs all aspects of our life and it describes how everything in the universe works but what sucks is that studying it is like drilling a hole in your skull

Just reposting this on the right blog, haha!

jiggle

physics

so this is the easiest project ever huh??

essentially the rubic says i have to

be there

have a presentation

have a physical representation of what i’m talking about

show that my physics project is about physics

be excited

like……. ok

i can do that

i mean i was planning to calculate this on my own but i get a grade for it now so

also i’m gonna post the presentation once it’s done (with my actual name removed) so that you guys can see it

The sarcastic one would be me

This graphic shows how fast a rocket must go to leave every planet

The Pillars of Eagle Castle What lights up this castle of star formation? The familiar Eagle Nebula glows bright in many colors at once. The above image is a composite of three of these glowing gas colors. Pillars of dark dust nicely outline some of the denser towers of star formation. Energetic light from young massive stars causes the gas to glow and effectively boils away part of the dust and gas from its birth pillar. Many of these stars will explode after several million years, returning most of their elements back to the nebula which formed them. This process is forming an open cluster of stars known as M16. Image Credit & Copyright: Emanuele Colognato & Jim Wood

Ah jadi pengen kerja di NASA! Impian masalalu :')

Dusty Nebulae in Taurus This complex of dusty nebulae linger along the edge of the Taurus molecular cloud, a mere 450 light-years distant. Stars are forming on the cosmic scene, including extremely youthful star RY Tauri prominent toward the upper left of the 1.5 degree wide telescopic field. In fact RY Tauri is a pre-main sequence star, embedded in its natal cloud of gas and dust, also catalogued as reflection nebula vdB 27. Highly variable, the star is still relatively cool and in the late phases of gravitational collapse. It will soon become a stable, low mass, main sequence star, a stage of stellar evolution achieved by our Sun some 4.5 billion years ago. Another pre-main sequence star, V1023 Tauri, can be spotted below and right, embedded in its yellowish dust cloud adjacent to the striking blue reflection nebula Ced 30. Image Credit & Copyright: Bob Franke

It’s Schlier-tastic!!

These are my invisible wonders!  Gas flows and fluid interactions.  Nothing but hot air, metho and acetone, yup, humble old nail polish remover.

The images were captured using a colour indicating z-system schlieren optical array, an open shutter and a flash duration of 125 microseconds.

We take for granted that drops which impact a solid surface will splash, but, in fact, drops only splash when the surrounding air pressure is high enough. When the air pressure is low enough, drops simply impact and spread, regardless of the fluid, drop height, or surface roughness. Why this is and what role the surrounding air plays remains unclear. Here researchers visualize the air flow around a droplet impact. In (a) we see the approaching drop and the air it pulls with it. Upon impact in (b) and © the drop spreads and flattens while a crown of air rises in its wake. The drop’s spread initiates a vortex ring that is pinned to the drop’s edge. In later times (d)-(f) the vortex ring detaches from the drop and rolls up. (Photo credit: I. Bischofberger et al.)

Atomization is the process of breaking a liquid into a spray of fine droplets. There are many methods to accomplish this, including jet impingement, pressure-driven nozzles, and ultrasonic excitement. In the images above, a drop has been atomized through vibration of the surface on which it rests. Check out the full video. As the amplitude of the surface’s vibration increases, the droplet shifts from rippling capillary waves to ejecting tiny droplets. With the right vibrational forcing, the entire droplet bursts into a fine spray, as seen in the photo above. The process is extremely quick, taking less than 0.4 seconds to atomize a 0.1 ml drop of water. (Photo and video credit: B. Vukasinovic et al.; source video)

My window is smarter than yours…

Two jets colliding can form a chain-like fluid structure. With increasing flow rate, the rim of the chains becomes wavy and unstable, forming a fishbone structure where droplets extend outward from the fluid sheet via tiny ligaments. Eventually, the droplets break off in a pattern as beautiful as it is consistent. (Photo credits: A. Hasha and J. Bush)