Here’s a beautiful fluid dynamics experiment that begins in your shower

The next fourth dimension you ’re in the shower , try pouring a firm stream of shampoo into an open , flattened medallion . See how the thread loops and buckles as it comes into liaison with your deal ? Physicists who study fluid moral force call this behavior “ the rope - coiling effect ; ” it ’s a strong-arm attribute normally observed in viscid fluids ( like shampoo ) when they ’re poured from a nozzle onto a flat aerofoil ( like your hand ) .

Now target your tending to the video recording up top . In it , University of Toronto physicist Stephen Morris and his confrere have replace the crude conditions of your shower - research lab with an setup capable of much greater experimental preciseness . Morris ’ gummy fluid is dispensed at a consistent pace from a nozzle positioned at a set tiptop onto a much flatter airfoil than the medallion of your deal . And to make thing extra interesting , Morris and his colleagues have replaced the stationary surface of your palm with a motorized belt , the speed of which can be wide-ranging .

In doing so , Morris and his fellow note that “ the rotational symmetry of the buckling instability is broken , and a wealth of interesting state are observed . ” Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics walks us through the change that we see in the video :

In this picture a very viscous ( but still Newtonian ) fluid is falling in a stream onto a moving swath . Initially , the belt is proceed quickly enough that the viscid flow create a unbent thread . As the belt is slowed , the stream begin to meander sinusoidally [ i.e. in the pattern of a sin curve , pictured here ] and ultimately start out to roll . apart from some passing behavior when the speeding of the rap is commute very quickly , the behavior of the screw thread is very consistent within a finicky speeding regime . This is indicative of a nonlinear dynamical system ; each shifting in behavior due to the changing speed of the belt is called a bifurcation and can be distinguish mathematically from the governing equation(s ) of the scheme .

Beautiful stuff , right ? Hooray for shower physics !

[ arXivviaFuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics ]

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