Weird fluid dynamics effect, did you say?

Doug at Nanoscale views has a pointer:

arxiv:0805.0490 - Amjadi et al., A liquid film motor
Hat tip to arxivblog for pointing this out to me. These folks at Sharif University in Iran have found that DC electric fields can make soap films flow in very interesting and controllable ways. They suggest a few possible mechanisms for this kind of electrohydrodynamic motion, but conclude that none of them are entirely satisfactory. The paper has a minor rendering problem with Fig. 4, but you should definitely watch the movies on their webpage. Very dramatic! Soft CM physics can be inspiring - here’s a visually impressive phenomenon that might actually be useful in fluidic applications, and the whole experiment is simple, elegant, and inexpensive. No exotic apparatus required.

Well, there is more to soap films than you ever dreamt of!

Tags: fluid dynamics, soap films