30 seconds of breathtaking awe at physics – watch a water droplet bounce in ultra-slow-motion. Then, see 7 more everyday things in mesmerizing slow motion.
Who knew water could bounce on water?!?
Surface tension is amazing. Phenomena like this are dependent on the size of the drop, of course, so that the mechanical force of falling and bouncing doesn’t overcome the hydrogen bonding that keeps the droplet/surface intact.
Definitely the coolest example of crazy fluid dynamics I’ve seen since these superhydrophobic nanotubes (also in GIF form).
What’s that? You want your bouncing water droplets in GIF form?
Ok then.
Look how little they get! They’re like Russian nesting dolls made of liquid.
Turbulent and rich…we love our #water. #coastal #island #Micronesia #pacific (Taken with Instagram)
Photo credit: Ami Vitale
Bills for basic gas and electricity reached record highs in 2011, and the trend isn’t likely to end any time soon. See where rates are rising and why in this graphic from One Block off the Grid.
Nutrient-Balanced Water Would Help Coral Reefs
Research from the Univ. of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton has found that an imbalance of nutrients in reef waters can increase the bleaching susceptibility of reef corals. Corals are made up of many polyps that jointly form a layer of living tissue covering the calcareous skeletons. They depend on single-celled algae called zooxanthellae, which live within the coral polyps.
The coral animal and the associated zooxanthellae depend on each other for survival in a symbiotic relationship, where the coral supplies the algae with nutrients and a place to live. In turn, the algae offer the coral some products of their photosynthesis, providing them with an important energy source.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2012/08/nutrient-balanced-water-would-help-coral-reefs
Material Can Extract Uranium from Seawater
Fueling nuclear reactors with uranium harvested from the ocean could become more feasible because of a material developed by a team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The combination of ORNL’s high-capacity reusable adsorbents and a Florida company’s high-surface-area polyethylene fibers creates a material that can rapidly, selectively and economically extract valuable and precious dissolved metals from water. The material, HiCap, vastly outperforms today’s best adsorbents, which perform surface retention of solid or gas molecules, atoms or ions. HiCap also effectively removes toxic metals from water, according to results verified by researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
“We have shown that our adsorbents can extract five to seven times more uranium at uptake rates seven times faster than the world’s best adsorbents,” says Chris Janke, one of the inventors and a member of ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/08/material-can-extract-uranium-seawater
I’m not an optimist. I’m not a pessimist. I’m a scientist.
But the physicist says atoms are mostly empty space so technically the glass is mostly empty. Not even sorry.
Ocean Currents
Just some pictures of ocean currents.
I love looking at oceanographic maps because the water-covered parts of the globe are so often de-emphasised—I guess because most of us humans live on land—even though most of the interesting things happening on Earth involve water.
Oceanographic maps are like looking at the world inside-out—perhaps as it should be seen, not from our perspective but from the majority perspective.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Perpetual_Ocean.ogv
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Circulation_of_Ocean_Currents_Around_the_Western_Antarctic_Ice_Shelves.ogv
Maths concepts:
- vector fields on S²
- topology; connected spaces
- convection cells, Rayleigh number
- According to Ole Nielsen, ocean waves are trochoids, not sine waves:
- fluid mechanics
- differentials, gradient
- boundary & flow
- discrete versions? (maybe a graph … or see the discrete geometry paper I posted)
A great lecture on this topic was given by Stephen C Stearns and recorded & displayed by the people at AcademicEarth.org.
West coasts are really different the world over because, duh, the Earth is spinning. (Eastward.) That throws stuff up on the shores of the west (e.g. Nitrogen on one of the Chilean coasts which ends up becoming the world’s major source of guano) You also get a different clockwise/anticlockwise circulation of the ocean currents in the Northern and Southern hemispheres because that eastward force pushes differently below -vs- above the equator. Pretty simple logic and it makes things be the way they are.
Molecular Sieve Helps Fukushima Cleanup
A Sandia National Laboratories technology has been used to remove radioactive material from more than 43 million gallons of contaminated wastewater at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Sandia researchers had worked around the clock following the March 2011 disaster to show the technology worked in seawater, which was pumped in to cool the plant’s towers.
“It’s the kind of thing that sends a chill,” says Mark Rigali, manager of the geochemistry group at Sandia. “We’ve helped really make a difference in the world. These are the kinds of successes we want to see with all our intellectual property.”
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Molecular-Sieve-Helps-Fukushima-Cleanup-053012.aspx
Climate Change Led to Collapse of Ancient Civilization
A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4,000 years ago. The study also resolves a long-standing debate over the source and fate of the Sarasvati, the sacred river of Hindu mythology.
Once extending more than 1 million square kilometers across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, over what is now Pakistan, northwest India and eastern Afghanistan, the Indus civilization was the largest — but least known — of the first great urban cultures that also included Egypt and Mesopotamia. Like their contemporaries, the Harappans, named for one of their largest cities, lived next to rivers owing their livelihoods to the fertility of annually watered lands.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Climate-Change-Key-to-Collapse-of-Ancient-Civilization-053012.aspx
Don’t wash those jeans, freeze them
A typical pair of blue jeans uses almost 1,000 gallons of water during its lifecycle!
Source: mothernaturenetwork
UV Disinfection Possible with Energy-Efficient LEDs
Research from North Carolina State Univ. will allow the development of energy-efficient LED devices that use ultraviolet (UV) light to kill pathogens such as bacteria and viruses. The technology has a wide array of applications ranging from drinking-water treatment to sterilizing surgical tools.
“UV treatment utilizing LEDs would be more cost-effective, energy efficient and longer lasting,” says Ramón Collazo, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research. “Our work would also allow for the development of robust and portable water-treatment technologies for use in developing countries.”
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-UV-Disinfection-May-Be-Achievable-with-LEDs-051512.aspx
How Much Water is On Earth?
In this illustration, the blue ball represents the volume of all the water on earth, relative to the size of the earth. The tiny speck to the right of the blue ball represents Earth’s fresh water. CREDIT: David Gallo/WHOI
If Earth was the size of a basketball, all of its water would fit into a ping pong ball.
How much water is that? It’s roughly 326 million cubic miles (1.332 billion cubic kilometers), according to a recent study from the U.S. Geological Survey. Some 72 percent of Earth is covered in water, but 97 percent of that is salty ocean water and not suitable for drinking.
“There’s not a lot of water on Earth at all,” said David Gallo, an oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts.
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Love science? Have a t-shirt of the periodic table of elements? Like to explain to strangers how the universe works? Do you want to tap that asymptote? Do you solve differential equations for fun? Did you build your own hard drive?