Life in Venice Beach lends itself to wave-watching, or so it seems for photographer Craig Hubbard. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31447

Our largest space telescope, JWST, has a 6.5-meter reflector, the largest we could manage given manufacturing constraints and the need to launch it in a rocket. To reach even larger sizes, researchers are considering a new type of reflector: one made of liquid. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31563

In cold weather, a new geological feature has shown up at Utah's Great Salt Lake in the last decade. These salty mirabilite mounds form terraced crystals that resemble Yellowstone's Mammoth Hot Springs. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31419

Here, researchers explore what happens when the droplet can dissolve the fiber it's suspended on. As the authors note, a lumberjack who cuts the branch they sit on makes a fatal choice. The droplet sees a different outcome. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31524

In the early twentieth century, Los Angeles had capital and political willpower, but not water. So it built an engineering marvel, the LA Aquaduct, to guide water from the Sierra Nevadas down to the growing city. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30835

In this short film, videographer Maxwel Hohn follows the migration of western toad tadpoles in British Columbia, showing their daily underwater journey from deep waters, where they can hide, to warmer, shallow waters, where they eat. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31435

To enhance the burn-off of marine oil spills, researchers are looking at the possibility of triggering large-scale fire whirls. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30819

Keeping the water in a reservoir is an obvious challenge for any dam. But for Iraq's Mosul Dam, it's especially challenging because the dam was built on a foundation of gypsum, a highly water-soluble mineral. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31068

Since 1989, Utah's Great Salt Lake has lost some 70% of its surface area. Scientist are studying the exposed lakebed to find the water hiding beneath. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31410

In the Southern Ocean, obstacles are sparse. But the ice-cloaked volcano of Peter I Island is tall enough at over 1600 meters to disrupt the wind. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31341

Though we rarely notice their movement in the moment, plants, and especially their flowers, are frequently on the move. Here, retired engineer Jay McClellan captures a thymeleaf speedwell flower as it opens, then pushes a stamen toward its pistil, thereby pollina https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=25185

The Venus fly trap has long fascinated scientists with its ability to catch fast-moving prey. Just how the plant closes its "trap" leaf so quickly is a matter of debate. A new study gives us more detail--but not complete clarity--about what's going on. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31297

Off the coast of Alaska, March 19th, 2026 featured a trio of fascinating clouds. Southwest of Anchorage, a cyclonic polar low twisted up from cold polar air centered over warmer waters. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30579

Oobleck is a peculiar substance. Formed from a suspension of cornstarch particles in water, it can flow like a liquid at low shear rates or jam into a solid under impact. Here, researchers explore what happens to a droplet of oobleck impacting a surface. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30349

Engineering failures always leave us with lessons learned. The failure of Teton Dam in 1976 triggered an overhaul in how we manage dam construction and regulation. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31333

Years ago, photographer Ernie Button discovered an intriguing stain left behind in his whiskey glass after the last drops evaporated. Many liquors and one scientific paper later, we now see what cognac does. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31085

The US eastern seaboard was once blanketed with oyster beds, but overharvesting, pollution, and habitat destruction decimated the population. A new study shows restored beds are even more valuable than we knew, thanks to their ability to bury excess nitrogen. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31025

In early February 2026, cold weather swept into southern Florida. The cold fronts churned up sediment and cooled shallow waters, making them denser than the warmer waters of the open ocean. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30938

As anyone who has regularly traveled unpaved roads knows, they have a tendency to develop regularly spaced corrugations, otherwise known as washboarding. This unavoidable phenomenon is fluid mechanical. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=31034

Breaking a jet of liquid into droplets lies at the heart of many industrial processes: spray painting, fuel injection, and asthma inhalers, to name a few. Here, researchers are looking at a different method of breaking up a liquid jet: shooting a shock wave along https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30095

Nothing showcases the incredible power of our atmosphere like storms, and no one does stormchase photography like Mike Olbinski. In this vignette, he shows a stunning line of supercells caught near sunset on July 17, 2022. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30682

On 10 August 2025, the slopes of Alaska's Tracy Arm Fjord gave way, sliding into the water. The resulting tsunami was the second-largest ever recorded, with a 481-meter runup after a 100-meter initial wave that moved at more than 70 meters per second. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30699

Insect flight is vastly different than the aerodynamics engineers learn around aircraft. That's particularly apparent looking at these tiny moths taking off and flying in slow motion. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30754

Coffee is a key ingredient in the scientific process for many researchers, so it's no wonder that researchers often develop an interest in the drink's physics and chemistry. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30367

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter was the first aircraft humanity has flown on another planet, and engineers are looking to make the next generation of Martian helicopters bigger and more capable. That's challenging in Mars' thin atmosphere, which is only 1% as dense a https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30574

Artist Thomas Blanchard likes to create wild visuals from a mixture of mundane ingredients like ink, soap, oils, and ferrofluids. #chemistry #fluiddynamics #physics #science https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30865

In the past few decades, our knowledge of exoplanets has exploded, but we're still relatively limited in what we can learn about these worlds. That's due, in large part, to the indirect way we observe them. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30824

The concrete that makes up so much of our world is usually local in origin. To keep costs low, engineers use locally-sourced ingredients to make it. But not all ingredients perform the same. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30722

From oil drums to--yes--soda cans, liquid-filled cylindrical shells are everywhere. And, it turns out, these structures fail differently than empty shells or ones filled with a solid. Liquid-filled cylinders buckle in sequential rings. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30595

Ocean sprays, coughs, and sneezes are just a few of the ways that droplets full of bacteria and salt can get aloft on a breeze. How do these bacteria stay viable even as their droplet evaporates? That's the question in today's post. https://fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=30332