A von Karman vortex street forms in the wake of a cylinder in shallow channel flow, visualized with a rheoscopic fluid (Pearl Swirl).

By Jason Brownstein for Spring 2014 Team Third.
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A von Karman vortex street forms in the wake of a cylinder in shallow channel flow, visualized with a rheoscopic fluid (Pearl Swirl).

Rheoscopic fluid (Pearl Swirl) shows turbulent boundary layers in shallow channel flow.

As silver bottle wax melts in a crock pot, its optical characteristics change, allowing motion in the wax to be seen, illustrating non-diffusive mixing.

Paint layered into a mixing bowl and poured shows non-diffusive mixing, here seen color-reversed.

Layers of food dye pushed into corn syrup illustrates non-diffusive mixing.

Sunlight is concentrated into ‘caustics’ by small waves on the water surface, here near a Caribbean beach.

Self-propelled water droplets race up a slight incline on a serrated heated plate due to the Liedenfrost effect.

A hot serrated surface can propel droplets up a slight incline due to Liedenfrost film boiling.

An ‘Ooze Tube’ toy can create concentric bubbles strong enough to deflect a drop. Meanwhile, an older dropping stream undergoes the rope coiling instability.

Commercial smoke bombs generate particles large enough to produce colored smoke.