fuckyeahfluiddynamics:

Underwater explosions are, in general, much more dangerous than those in air. This video shows an underwater blast at 30,000 fps. During the initial blast, a hot sphere of gas expands outward in a shock wave. In air, some of the energy of this pressure wave would be dissipated by compressing the air. Since water is incompressible, however, the blast instead moves water aside as the bubble expands. Eventually, the bubble expands to the point where its pressure is less than that of the water around it, which causes the bubble to collapse. But the collapse increases the gas pressure once more, kicking off a series of expansions and collapses. Each bubble contains less energy than the previous, thanks to the loss of pushing the water aside. (Video credit: K. Kitagawa)

If you needed something to make a science GIF out of this weekend, here’s a good subject.

Whoa.

(via thescienceofreality)

Source: fuckyeahfluiddynamics

Windswept - Sculpture Moved By Wind

It’s time for another Episode Extra! (which is where you special blog readers get to check out really cool stuff to go along with my YouTube videos, like special features on a DVD, only way more special-er)


Have you seen the latest episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart yet? I answer a question so simple that many people forget to ask it: What Is Wind? There’s some amazingly simple science behind it, and the answer might just blow you away*.

Here’s one of my favorite wind-powered art projects: Windswept by Charles Sowers. Using 612 freely-rotating arrows, you can visualize the swirling patterns of wind on the micro scale. It’s hypnotic and beautiful, and a fine artistic accompaniment to the visualizations in the episode, eh?

Click here to subscribe to It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube.

*sorry for the pun … j/k, not really, bad puns are the best.

via science-junkie: Prince Rupert’s drop The prince Rupert’s drop is a truly amazing thing.When molten glass hits cold water, its outer surface cools rapidly and shrinks as it solidifies. Since the center is still fluid, it can flow to adjust to the outer shell’s smaller size. As that center eventually cools and solidifies, it also shrinks, but now the outer shell is already solid and can’t change its shape to accommodate the smaller core. The result of this is a high amount of internal pressure, as the inside pulls the outside from all directions the glass is set to release a lot of energy. If you break the thin glass at the tail, a chain reaction travels like a shock wave through the drop. As each section breaks, it releases enough energy to break the next section, and so on, shattering the whole drop in less than a millisecond. At the same time The glass can be extremely strong aswell glass breaks when tiny scratches pull apart and spread into fractures. Since the surface is compressed by internal stress, scratches can’t grow, and the glass is very difficult to break. Credits: ScienceCubed - http://sciencecubed.tumblr.com/  People, if you haven’t seen Destin from Smarter Every Day shatter these things at 130,000 frames per second, you haven’t truly lived.
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via science-junkie:

Prince Rupert’s drop

The prince Rupert’s drop is a truly amazing thing.When molten glass hits cold water, its outer surface cools rapidly and shrinks as it solidifies. Since the center is still fluid, it can flow to adjust to the outer shell’s smaller size. As that center eventually cools and solidifies, it also shrinks, but now the outer shell is already solid and can’t change its shape to accommodate the smaller core. The result of this is a high amount of internal pressure, as the inside pulls the outside from all directions the glass is set to release a lot of energy. If you break the thin glass at the tail, a chain reaction travels like a shock wave through the drop. As each section breaks, it releases enough energy to break the next section, and so on, shattering the whole drop in less than a millisecond. At the same time The glass can be extremely strong aswell glass breaks when tiny scratches pull apart and spread into fractures. Since the surface is compressed by internal stress, scratches can’t grow, and the glass is very difficult to break.

Credits: ScienceCubed - http://sciencecubed.tumblr.com/ 

People, if you haven’t seen Destin from Smarter Every Day shatter these things at 130,000 frames per second, you haven’t truly lived.

You’re looking at the first-ever picture of a hydrogen atom. Or really, it’s an image of the electron orbital “cloudy-woudy, quantumy-wantumy” … stuff. It’s not a real image, like we’re used to seeing, of course. Atoms are smaller than the wavelength of light, and you can’t see anything smaller than the wavelength of light, by definition. Here’s what you’re looking at: First of all, electrons don’t exist as the cartoonish orbiting particle-planets like we see on the Springfield Isotopes logo: Instead, they exist as a probability cloud, behaving like both waves and particles. Check out this delightfully old-school MinutePhysics video to see what I mean: If you know about things like of quantum mechanical principles like the Schrödinger equation, the Pauli Exclusion Principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you know that directly observing an electron, with all of its wavy-particley dualness, is next to impossible. Instead, we describe the identity and “location” of an electron as a probability. In other words, within a certain cloud-like region around a nucleus, an electron has a certain probability of being any which where at any time. Only, if you try to directly observe it, you’re never able to nail down precisely where it is. It’s complicated, I know. Thanks to newly-developed photoionization microscopy, though, those wave patterns can now be detected! German and Dutch physicists applied laser pulses to hydrogen atoms hanging in an electric field. This excited the hydrogen’s lone electron into various ring-like energy states, and then some of them were flung out to a detector. After observing lots and lots of these, and adding and subtracting all the interfering waves, they were able to reconstruct the probability cloud pattern for every place (and time) that a hydrogen’s electron can be. If you like that, then you should definitely check out the world’s smallest movie, drawn with individual atoms by IBM. Wave patterns galore!! If you’d like to dig deeper into the physics of this hydrogen atom observation, head over to PhysicsWorld.
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You’re looking at the first-ever picture of a hydrogen atom. Or really, it’s an image of the electron orbital “cloudy-woudy, quantumy-wantumy” … stuff. It’s not a real image, like we’re used to seeing, of course. Atoms are smaller than the wavelength of light, and you can’t see anything smaller than the wavelength of light, by definition.

Here’s what you’re looking at: First of all, electrons don’t exist as the cartoonish orbiting particle-planets like we see on the Springfield Isotopes logo:

Instead, they exist as a probability cloud, behaving like both waves and particles. Check out this delightfully old-school MinutePhysics video to see what I mean:

If you know about things like of quantum mechanical principles like the Schrödinger equation, the Pauli Exclusion Principle and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you know that directly observing an electron, with all of its wavy-particley dualness, is next to impossible. Instead, we describe the identity and “location” of an electron as a probability. In other words, within a certain cloud-like region around a nucleus, an electron has a certain probability of being any which where at any time. Only, if you try to directly observe it, you’re never able to nail down precisely where it is. It’s complicated, I know.

Thanks to newly-developed photoionization microscopy, though, those wave patterns can now be detected! German and Dutch physicists applied laser pulses to hydrogen atoms hanging in an electric field. This excited the hydrogen’s lone electron into various ring-like energy states, and then some of them were flung out to a detector. After observing lots and lots of these, and adding and subtracting all the interfering waves, they were able to reconstruct the probability cloud pattern for every place (and time) that a hydrogen’s electron can be.

If you like that, then you should definitely check out the world’s smallest movie, drawn with individual atoms by IBM. Wave patterns galore!! If you’d like to dig deeper into the physics of this hydrogen atom observation, head over to PhysicsWorld.

In the “Atoms In Motion” introduction to Richard Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics (which you can actually watch, thanks to Microsoft), there’s a very interesting footnote. I saw it in the condensed and immensely enjoyable Six Easy Pieces, which everyone should read:

“One can burn a diamond in air”

That took me by surprise. But it’s true! The video above from Theodore Gray (who is really good at burning stuff) shows that diamond will ignite if brought to a certain temperature and given enough oxygen to latch on to. Like Feynman said, those carbon atoms and oxygen atoms love each other, and want to snap together (which gives off heat), but enough input energy must be applied first to break down the diamond crystal, (which also makes carbon atoms pretty happy).

Interesting note about cheap old zirconium in there, too …

(tip of the torch to Freelance Astrophysicist, where I found the video)

freshphotons: “These three images are snapshots of a spark-ignited expanding flame in different environments of the same hydrogen-air mixture. The top flame shows the ideal, reference case of a stable, smooth flame surface in a quiescent environment at atmospheric pressure. The middle flame is taken under elevated pressure simulating that within an internal combustion engine. The bottom flame is taken in a highly turbulent environment simulating another aspect of the engine interior. All images were taken at 8000 frames per second, using schlieren photography. The radius of the top flame is 11.4 millimeters.”  C.K. Law, Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, and Fujia Wu (Princeton University). Explosive beauty.
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freshphotons:

“These three images are snapshots of a spark-ignited expanding flame in different environments of the same hydrogen-air mixture. The top flame shows the ideal, reference case of a stable, smooth flame surface in a quiescent environment at atmospheric pressure. The middle flame is taken under elevated pressure simulating that within an internal combustion engine. The bottom flame is taken in a highly turbulent environment simulating another aspect of the engine interior. All images were taken at 8000 frames per second, using schlieren photography. The radius of the top flame is 11.4 millimeters.”  C.K. Law, Swetaprovo Chaudhuri, and Fujia Wu (Princeton University).

Explosive beauty.

(via scientificthought)

Source: nbcnews.com

Diagnosed with autism at age 2, told he would never learn to read, now 14 years old and working on a Master’s degree in quantum physics. If you’re looking for an inspiration today, look no further than Jacob Barnett. I like his mom’s concept of “muchness”: Surrond children with what they love, be it art, science, sports or whatever, and they will develop more fully than molding them to a design would ever allow.
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Diagnosed with autism at age 2, told he would never learn to read, now 14 years old and working on a Master’s degree in quantum physics.

If you’re looking for an inspiration today, look no further than Jacob Barnett.

I like his mom’s concept of “muchness”: Surrond children with what they love, be it art, science, sports or whatever, and they will develop more fully than molding them to a design would ever allow.

We never sit here under the weight of all this air, the 5 x 10^18 kg of atmosphere that sits above everyone on Earth, and say “Gosh, that sure is heavy!” You don’t realize just how powerful that 1 bar (~100 kPa) of pressure is until a train car is filled with steam, allowed to cool, and then implodes ohmygod did that just happen? For more implosion goodness, check out this awesome video from Veritasium.
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We never sit here under the weight of all this air, the 5 x 10^18 kg of atmosphere that sits above everyone on Earth, and say “Gosh, that sure is heavy!”

You don’t realize just how powerful that 1 bar (~100 kPa) of pressure is until a train car is filled with steam, allowed to cool, and then implodes ohmygod did that just happen?

For more implosion goodness, check out this awesome video from Veritasium.

The Physics of Baseball Pitches Five ounces of cork, yarn and leather is all it takes to produce high-velocity, mind-blowing physics. The movement of a baseball through the air is due to three things: The pitcher’s arm (moving it forward), gravity (moving it down), and air resistance from the spinning seams (which causes side-to-side, sinking and “rising” motion). Gravity will always pull a pitch down as it travels to the plate, but back and side spin create areas of high pressure on one side of the ball (“The Magnus Effect”, named for its discoverer). This creates a force that pushes the ball in the opposite direction, whether it be sideways (likea  slider), down (a sinker), or causing it to sink more slowly than normal (the “rising” pitch illusion). Check out: The physics behind 7 famous baseball pitches All about The Magnus Effect A 1959 paper studying the aerodynamics of a pitched baseball (where they wind tunnel shot above came from). A Science Channel video all about the physics of pitching For the truly curious, a REALLY in-depth and technical look into the physics of moving baseballs Some believe that current pitchers have reached the biomechanical limits for pitch velocity and movement. When you consider the sheer neuromuscular perfection seen in this jaw-dropping overlaid GIF of the Rangers’ Yu Darvish, I can see how that might appear to be the case (via Reddit): Perhaps more than in any other sport, baseball pitchers embody the astonishing combination of precision and power in the heart of our motor neurons: Producing unbelievable force and grace, with nearly identical repetition, a couple hundred times a week. 
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The Physics of Baseball Pitches

Five ounces of cork, yarn and leather is all it takes to produce high-velocity, mind-blowing physics. The movement of a baseball through the air is due to three things: The pitcher’s arm (moving it forward), gravity (moving it down), and air resistance from the spinning seams (which causes side-to-side, sinking and “rising” motion).

Gravity will always pull a pitch down as it travels to the plate, but back and side spin create areas of high pressure on one side of the ball (“The Magnus Effect”, named for its discoverer). This creates a force that pushes the ball in the opposite direction, whether it be sideways (likea  slider), down (a sinker), or causing it to sink more slowly than normal (the “rising” pitch illusion).

Check out:

Some believe that current pitchers have reached the biomechanical limits for pitch velocity and movement. When you consider the sheer neuromuscular perfection seen in this jaw-dropping overlaid GIF of the Rangers’ Yu Darvish, I can see how that might appear to be the case (via Reddit):

Perhaps more than in any other sport, baseball pitchers embody the astonishing combination of precision and power in the heart of our motor neurons: Producing unbelievable force and grace, with nearly identical repetition, a couple hundred times a week.