fluid-dynamics

To celebrate the beginning of summer, we take a behind-the-scenes look at how a water slide works using Simcenter Flomaster.

Superfluids are intriguing states of matter in which particles behave like a giant collective wave, allowing them to flow without any friction. When this fluid flows past a fixed obstacle at a velocity below a specific threshold, it moves around it without slowing down or exerting any drag. Above this critical velocity, however, the superfluid […]

Almost everyone has experienced the frustration of trying to get ketchup out of a bottle. At first, nothing happens. The ketchup seems almost solid and refuses to move. Then, suddenly, it starts flowing, sometimes too quickly and all at once. Scientists call this surprising change in behavior “yielding.” Yielding happens when a material switches from […] The post Why ketchup suddenly pours: Scien…

Scientific Reports, Published online: 18 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-58049-1 Influences of different particle characteristics on particle movement in a forced vortex flow

As summer road trips begin and rainy weather arrives, many drivers may encounter one of the most dangerous situations on the road: hydroplaning. This happens when a layer of water builds up between a vehicle’s tires and the road surface, causing the tires to lose grip. In severe cases, drivers can temporarily lose steering and […] The post Why your car can suddenly slide on wet roads—and how to r…

STEMgineer’s Guide to Problem Solving Workbooks   After an important scientific discovery, many scientists still shout, “Eureka!” This phrase comes from the ancient Greek mathematician […] The post How did Archimedes discover buoyancy? appeared first on STEM Education Works .

A dynamical system is a space (often a bare set or a manifold) together with a “law of motion” expressed by the action of a monoid : To model continuous time-evolution one may take to be the additive group of real numbers. For discrete time evolution is the additive group of integers (or just the monoid of natural numbers). In this case the law of motion is often given by an initial value problem…

Bird flocks, bacterial swarms, and even crowds move according to interaction rules that appear to break one of physics’ most fundamental principles: Newton’s law of action and reaction. Birds can see much of what is happening around them, but when flying in a flock, they respond only to birds beside them or ahead of them. [...]

A friend of mine tried to pull a wheeled tool chest up a ramp with a rope tied to his car. The ramp was just a normal flat board and instead of going up the ramp, the wheel caught and the whole thing ...

* By Brian Vinci, George Chamberlain, Robins McIntosh, Riley Krohn, Sujit Kaewchum, Antonio Santa Marta and Robert Jones Super-intensive shrimp farming demands robust infrastructure to handle solids like uneaten feed and molts. This article explores the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to narrow down design options for 16- and 36-meter circular tanks. The results […]

Physicists have solved a long-standing problem involving systems that appear to violate Newton’s third law, such as bird flocks and bacterial swarms. By adding carefully designed “imaginary partners” to their models, they can now simulate these complex systems with unprecedented accuracy.

A pixel-art sailing game might seem simple on the surface, but building one with convincing real-world physics, especially for something as complex as wind, presents a fascinating technical challenge. Let's peel back the layers of TinyWind, a pixel pirate game that has already seen its players sail over 380,000 kilometers, to understand the engineering choices behind its captivating, wind-driven …

Scientific Data, Published online: 13 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41597-026-07490-y A comprehensive CFD lifecycle dataset for marine vessel hydrodynamics

Birds in flocks, bacteria and cells: In many collective systems, individual elements respond to only part of their surroundings, seemingly defying Newton’s third law of motion—action equals reaction. These exceptions are known as nonreciprocal interactions. A Dresden physics team working with Roderich Moessner, a founding member of the Würzburg–Dresden Cluster of Excellence ctd.qmat, has now [&#8…

Scientific Reports, Published online: 12 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-56523-4 Lattice boltzmann method for investigation of flow through square in-line cylinders with transverse oscillation

I had a large container full of water placed in a high location above a staircase leading to the rooftop, and I could not lift or move it. I tried to empty it using an 8-meter-long hose connected to a ...

Scientific Reports, Published online: 12 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41598-026-57554-7 Effect of waist drum axial position on energy separation performance of Maxwell structured tubes

Whether the dust borne on the violent winds of a tornado or the sugar grains in a swirled cup of coffee, the behavior of particles carried along in turbulence is subject to some similarities -- all of them difficult to predict at scale. As described in a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, a research team led by Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists has…