2008 Image Gallery

A Splash of Red

Not your ordinary splash -- a 2-mm droplet of red dye impacting on a thin layer of milk.

Carbon Dioxide-Absorbing Aqueous Brine

The formation of a water-rich boundary layer near the free surface leads to a buoyancy-induced instability in the form of fingers sinking into the liquid bulk.

Splash-Rebound of a Viscoelastic Drop

In this sequence of images, the collision of a viscoelastic drop (or particle) is observed with a high speed camera.

A Miniature Explosion within a Droplet

A miniature explosion initiated within a droplet of 6 mm diameter and sitting on a glass plate leads to the upward ejection of a fast liquid jet. The explosion generated with a pulsed laser creates an expanding and then shrinking bubble.

Film Instabilities in Microchannels

These droplet-decorated streams are observed through the glass of a diverging microchannel.

Swimming by Jet Propulsion

The jet wake produced by the salp, Cyclosalpa affinis, a common gelatinous organisms in oceanic waters. They swim by jet propulsion, drawing water through incurrent (oral) and excurrent (atrial) siphons at opposite ends of the body.

An Iron Drop in a Magnetic Field

The miscible interface of a ferrofluid droplet under the influence of a vertical magnetic field.

Sphere Passing Through Corn Syrup

Overlaid images of a sphere entraining dyed corn syrup as it passes through the density transition in a strong, stable stratification of miscible fluids.

Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability

These images show results of a computer simulation of two fluid layers flowing across each other in opposite directions. The swirling waves and vortices form due to the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, which is named after two of the scientists that first studied them nearly 150 years ago.

The Planar Shock Wave

The images show the temporal evolution of a thin fluid layer of sulfur hexafluoride gas embedded in air, after interaction with a shock wave of strength Mach~1.2.

Flow over the Top of Hexagonal Cavities

These are pictures of dye inside hexagonal cavities showing the circulating vortices caused by the freestream flow over top of the cavities.

Detonation Waves

Self-luminous, open-shutter photographs of the re-establishment of detonation waves in a thin channel downstream of cylinder rows. The onset of detonation is marked by the appearance of a fish scale cellular pattern.

A Swimming Nematode

Color-coded velocity field snapshot of C. elegans swimming in water. The length and radius of the C. elegans are approximately 1 mm and 100 nm, respectively.

The Fish that Swims Like a Paddle-Wheel Boat

The vortex structure around a sinusoidally undulating ribbon fin of a weakly electric fish. A series of organized vortex rings creates a jet that propels the fish.

A Frying Pan Filled With a Thin Layer of Egg Whites

View of a frying pan filled with a thin layer of egg whites. Thermal convection in the fluid competes with coagulation of the egg albumen to create a fingering pattern propagating into the convection cells.

Semi-Regular Structures Inside Random Turbulent Flow

When fluid flows over a wing or over a flat-plate, quite often the state of the flow transitions from regular (laminar) to chaotic (turbulent).