How Insects Fly in the Rain
Getting caught in the rain is annoying for us but has the potential to be deadly for smaller creatures like insects. So how do they survive a deluge? Â (Video and image credit: Be Smart) Read the full article

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How Insects Fly in the Rain
Getting caught in the rain is annoying for us but has the potential to be deadly for smaller creatures like insects. So how do they survive a deluge? Â (Video and image credit: Be Smart) Read the full article

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A simple way of describing friction—by making it complicated
If you even bother to think about friction at all, you might think about rubbing your hands together to warm them up.
But friction is a big problem out in the world. Parts that rub against each other wear out. Machines may use more energy than they should. It's not trivial either: roughly 23% of the world's energy consumption is due to friction.
That has researchers on the hunt for ways to figure out how friction actually works, at the nanoscale level, so they can design lubricants and other ways to reduce it.
The trouble is, friction is extremely difficult to describe using a model. One of the most widely used mathematical models for friction at the nanoscale was first proposed in 1929, and it continues to be used because it is quite general. But when that model is used to look at more detailed situations, it doesn't work that well.
Read more.
Why Tornado Alley is North American
Growing up in northwest Arkansas, I spent my share of summer nights sheltering from tornadoes. Central North America -- colloquially known as Tornado Alley -- is especially prone to violent thunderstorms and accompanying tornadoes. That's due, in part, to two geographical features: the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico. (Image credit: G. Johnson; research credit: F. Li et al.; via Physics World) Read the full article
Disappearing Sea Ice Ridges
As blocks of sea ice shift and float, they can press together, forming ridges spaced every few hundred meters or so. A new study uses aerial observations from recent decades to show that these sea ridges are getting smaller in both size and number, a smoothing of Arctic topography that has many consequences. (Image credit: USGS; research credit: T. Krumpen et al.; via Eos) Read the full article
Unsticking in Jumps
Soft materials tend to be sticky, and once they're adhered to a surface, they're often harder to remove than they were to attach -- think of Scotch tape stuck to a desk. This difficulty separating sticky things -- known as adhesion hysteresis -- has been attributed to various causes, like energy lost to viscoelasticity or age-related chemical bonding. But a new study shows that both those explanations are unnecessary. (Image and research credit: A. Sanner et al.; via Physics World) Read the full article

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Rough Surfaces
In fluid dynamics, we're often concerned with flow moving past a solid surface -- air past an airplane wing, water past fish scales, oil between moving parts -- and those surfaces are rarely perfectly smooth. (Image credit: J. Kostelecky and C. Ansorge) Read the full article
Paris 2024: Beach Versus Indoor Volleyballs
Some of the differences between beach volleyball and indoor volleyball are obvious, like the number of players allowed -- two versus six -- and the courts -- a smaller sand court versus a bigger indoor court. But there are subtle and significant differences in the balls themselves. (Image credits: I. Garifullin, C. Chaurasia, C. Oskay, and M. Teirlinck) For more ongoing and past Olympic coverage, click here. Read the full article