Cambridge Core BlogWatch: How do Jellyfish Sting?
Jellyfish stingers reach an acceleration 50 times faster than that of a bullet as they are ejected from stinging capsules under high pressure.…
Tag archive: APS-DFD
Watch: Tracking Beetles using the Sound of their Wings
The Coconut Rhinoceros Beetle is an invasive species that if left alone would decimate citrus crops across California. To prevent this from happening, John Allen and his team at the University of Hawai’i have been working to hunt the insects down before they are able to reach the West Coast of the USA.…
Watch: How do Stinging Nettles Inject Poison?
The leaves of stinging nettles are covered in ‘pipette-like’ stingers which penetrate the skin on contact and deposit a small amount of poison.…
Watch: How does Sea Ice affect Climate Change?
There is no doubt that sea ice in the polar regions is melting, but what is the exact role that this plays in the global climate system?…
Watch – Fire and Ice: Burning Oil in the Polar Regions
One of the clean-up methods used following an oil spill is to burn the fuel on the surface of the ocean.…
Watch: Visualising Airflow around a Sail with Experiments and Simulations
The flow of air around a sail is very different to that of a wing, but both generate significant lift force.…
Watch: How to Reduce Drag when Cycling
Cyclists can use up to 90% of their energy overcoming drag, which was the motivation behind the work of Ivaylo Nedyalkov at the University of New Hampshire, who was able to measure the force on each individual cyclist in a train formation to determine the best position to reduce your overall drag.…
Watch: Simulating turbulence over canopies to improve air quality
By improving our understanding of turbulent flow over canopies we can design better cities to improve air quality. This is just one of the applications of the work of Alfredo Pinelli, a professor at City University of London working on Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of turbulence.…
Watch: Building Squid and Octopus Robots for Underwater Exploration
Current underwater vehicles are rigid in structure which limits their suitability for many tasks required for ocean exploration. Francesco Giorgio-Serchi is working with a team at the University of Southampton to design new robots based on squids and octopuses that are made entirely from silicone.…
Watch: Why shaking your head will NOT remove water from your ear
Removing water from your ear canal by shaking requires an acceleration 10 times that of gravity according to research from Sunny Jung at Virginia Tech (now Cornell).…
Watch: Cleaning up Oil Spills using Maths
Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, scientists at the University of Cambridge have been studying underwater plumes to try to understand how the Earth’s rotation affects the spread of oil.…
Watch: How do bees carry pollen?
Pollen is the main source of protein in a honey bees diet and so it’s essential that they are able to carry enough of it safely back to the hive.…