Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The Kaye effect

"Dutch researchers believe they have cracked the physics behind a mysterious bouncing behaviour of liquids, first seen more than 40 years ago. British engineer Arthur Kaye first noticed this weird phenomenon in 1963, while experimenting with a mixture of obscure organic liquids. When he poured his viscous mixture on to a surface, the down-going stream would suddenly throw up a jet that merged with the incoming stream." read more...

3 comments:

  1. Amazing, though I still don't reallt understand it.
    Also a beautiful video clip!

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  2. What I understand is that shear thinning(viscosity decrease with rate of shear stress) causes a large decrease in viscosity, which creates a smooth(due to low viscosity) ramp that guides the stream back into the air without much friction.

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  3. This looks spectacular! Remarkable how that stream bounces up.

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