Splash Lab

Splash Lab reveals secret to bottle-exploding trick

admin — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:27:23 +0000

Professor Tadd Truscott and graduate student Jesse Daily were featured on Inside Science TV demonstrating the science behind the bottle-exploding trick. Jesse’s thesis elucidates the phenomenon in more detail with a publication to come.

Sloshing Dynamics

admin — Wed, 01 May 2013 20:15:37 +0000

Professor Tadd Truscott along with Masters Student Robert Klaus and undergraduate Taylor W. Killian investigate the impact dynamics of hollow elastic spheres partially filled with fluid in a research paper and podcast featured on Physics of Fluids. Unlike an empty sphere, the internal fluid mitigates some of the rebound through an impulse driven exchange of energy wherein the fluid forms a jet inside the sphere. Surprisingly, this occurs on the second rebound or when the free surface is initially perturbed. Images gathered through experimentation show that the fluid reacts more quickly to the impact than the sphere, which decouples the two masses (fluid and sphere), imparts energy to the fluid, and removes rebound energy from the sphere. The experimental results are analyzed in terms of acceleration, momentum and an energy method suggesting an optimal fill volume in the neighborhood of 30%. While the characteristics of the fluid (i.e., density, viscosity, etc.) affect the fluid motion (i.e., type and size of jet formation), the rebound characteristics remain similar for a given fluid volume independent of fluid type. Implications of this work are a potential use of similar passive damping systems in sports technology and marine engineering.

Read the complete research paper here.

Listen to the podcast here.

Splash Lab Featured on CNN, KSL and BYU Homepage

admin — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 17:58:54 +0000

Happy Easter everyone!

We made another video in conjunction with BYU news to highlight some of our research with an Easter theme. KSL also wanted to come, and they created another segment about us. We were very excited to see both the video on the BYU webpage and the segment on KSL. So excited, in fact, that we would love to share these clips with everyone! Here’s are the links:

CNN Coverage

BYU Video

KSL Segment

First Utah Seaperch Competition Success

admin — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 19:57:42 +0000

Last week the SplashLab organized the first-ever Seaperch competition in the state of Utah. Although, it was the first competition of its kind in the state, over 200 middle and elementary school-age students participated. Throughout the year dozens of volunteers traveled to these various schools to teach the students about physics and engineering. These students used their knowledge to build small remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs). The year-long program and competition was a great success. We would like to thank the dozens of volunteers the helped throughout the year and at the competition, as well as all of our sponsors and partners. Without our sponsors, partners, and volunteers, this program could not have been possible. It was because of all of you, that we were able to change lives both in the present and possibly in the future.

The event was covered by many media agencies the links to these stories can be found below:

List of Seaperch Utah Sponsors:

GoEngineer
Department of Naval Research
National Defense Educational Program
Air Force Stem/Hill Air Force Base
Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International
The Living Planet Aquarium
Waboba

SAPIV Article Published in the Journal of Visual Experiments

admin — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 19:33:17 +0000

Last week an article from our lab featuring a detailed overview of Synthetic Aperture Particle Image Velocimetry was published in the Journal of Visual Experiments. You can watch the video and read the article on the JOVE website HERE.

If you would like to know more about Synthetic Aperture PIV, visit our SAPIV webstie at www.3dsaimaging.com

1st Annual Utah SeaPerch Competition

admin — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 00:09:49 +0000

Over Students 200 from 9 middle schools in Utah and Davis county will be coming to the Lehi Legacy Center on March 14th to compete in the first Utah SeaPerch Challenge. Students will be bringing underwater vehicles they have designed and built themselves to participate in a timed competition performing underwater tasks. The event will include a poster competition where students present their work and are able to talk to representatives from local engineering companies. Visitors are welcome.

DATE & LOCATION
14 March 2013
10:00am – 1:00pm

Lehi Legacy Center
123 N Center St.
Lehi, UT 84043

MIT Technology Review Highlights Cavitation Research

admin — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:45:01 +0000

Last Fall The Physics arXiv Blog highlighted us in the MIT Technology Review. Thanks guys we appreciate all of the good press. A link to their article can be found here.

Research Update: New Sloshing Video

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:30:58 +0000

We just added a new sloshing dynamics video on YouTube. We’ve added it to our Research section, but if you don’t want to make three more clicks, you can make only one click and watch it below.

New Video: How to Tie a Bowtie with Dr. T.T. Truscott

admin — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:29:11 +0000

Dr. Truscott is well known for his tasteful collection of non-pretentious bowties. In this video he shares his secret, so that you too can rock the bowtie.

New Video: Guns Being Shot at High Speed

admin — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:36:38 +0000

Hey look at this! We made Jesse and Jon made a video of guns being shot at high speed. They used a Schlieren process to visualize pressure gradients in the air.

SplashLab Christmas

admin — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:05:43 +0000

SplashLab was featured on the BYU homepage, KSL, Deseret News, fmzik.com, grooveyglue and many more. As you can see from the video, that we made good use of the color high speed video camera (Thanks to Itronx and Photron) and had a lot of fun. From all of us here at SplashLab we wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season!

2012 APS Poster Winner

admin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:11:37 +0000

One of our posters won the poster competition at the 2012 American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics Annual Conference this past week. You can check it out below:

AIP Gallery of Fluid Motion is Online

admin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:04:23 +0000

Last year our video “Holy Ball! Balls that Walk on Water” won the Milton VanDyke Award at the 2011 American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics Annual Conference. You can see the video as well as all of the other award winner here at the American Institute of Physics’ website.

Here’s the link to the gallery.

But if you just want to see “Holy Balls!” here’s a direct link here.

Dry Ice in Slow Motion

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 22:51:57 +0000

We had some left-over dry ice from our Halloween celebrations, so we decided to take some photos of dry ice sublimating underwater. Check out these photos, and these YouTube videos!

Quiescent Cavitation

admin — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:33:37 +0000

A popular party trick is to fill a glass bottle with water and hit the top of the bottle with an open hand, causing the bottom of the bottle to break open. We investigate the source of the catastrophic cracking through the use of high-speed video and an accelerometer attached to the bottom of a glass bottle.
Upon closer inspection, it is obvious that the acceleration caused by hitting the top of the bottle is followed by the formation of bubbles near the bottom. The nearly instantaneous acceleration creates an area of low pressure on the bottom of the bottle where cavitation bubbles form. Moments later, the cavitation bubbles collapse at roughly 10 times the speed of formation, causing the bottle to break. The accelerometer data shows that the bottle is broken after the bubbles collapse and that the magnitude of the bubble collapse is greater than the initial impact. The fluid dynamics video highlights that this trick will not work if the bottle is empty nor if it is filled with a carbonated fluid because the vapor bubbles fill with the CO2 dissolved in the liquid, preventing the bubbles from collapsing.
A modified cavitation number, including the acceleration of the fluid (a), vapor pressure (Pv), and depth of the fluid column (h), is derived to determine when cavity inception occurs. Through experimentation, visible cavitation bubbles form when the cavitation number is less than 0.5. The experiments, based on the modified cavitation number, reveal that the easiest way to break a glass bottle with your bare hands is to fill it with a non-carbonated, high vapor pressure fluid, and strike it hard.

Featured in the Daily Universe

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 20:47:17 +0000

On Sept. 21, our lab got a spot in the Daily Universe’s website. This article pretty much sums up what we do here at SplashLab. To read it click on the link.

APS 2012 Video Submissions Complete!

admin — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 18:51:00 +0000

We’ve submitted two videos to APS this year, but since most of you won’t be going to APS, we’ve decided to share them on our website as a sneak peak. Enjoy these little morsels of fluid dynamics.

Balls that walk on water: pub Physics of Fluids

admin — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:34:20 +0000

We are happy to announce that we were published today in Physics of Fluids highlighting our video entitled “Holy balls! Balls that walk on water.” We won last years Milton Van Dyke award at the annual American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics Gallery of Fluid Motion and were invited to publish a short article on our photos in this months edition of Physics of Fluids! You can find a link to the article here, and a the video entry below, as well as more information on our rock skipping page!

3D bubble field measurements: Pub Experiments in Fluids

admin — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 03:49:50 +0000

Today we were published in Experiments in Fluids. Our article entitled “Three Dimensional Bubble Field Resolution Using Synthetic Aperture Imaging: Application to a Plunging Jet” outlines a method for measuring bubble fields in three dimensions. We are grateful to the reviewers for a positive review and the funding agencies that made this work possible. The abstract appears below but for the full article go to link.

Abstract: A methodology for resolving three-dimensional (3D) bubble fields using 3D synthetic aperture imaging (SA imaging) is developed and applied to the bubbly flows induced by a turbulent circular plunging jet. 3D SA imaging involves capturing entirely in-focus images in an array of cameras with multiple viewpoints, then reprojecting the images into the measurement volume and combining them post capture. The result is a stack of synthetically refocused images that span the measurement volume with each refocused image having a narrow focus on a particular plane. In this paper, bubble shadow images are captured by projecting diffuse backlight onto the measurement volume. 3D SA imaging is ideally suited to investigate optically dense multiphase flows due to the ability to reconstruct volumes that contain partial occlusions. Instantaneous bubble sizes and locations in the plunging jet bubble fields are extracted from the volumes using two feature extraction algorithms and presented for various jet heights. The data are compared with existing literature on bubble penetration depth and size distributions. A scaling law for the integrated air concentration as a function of depth below the free-surface is proposed. Coupled with scaling laws for a parameter describing the radius of the bubble cone and radial concentration profiles, this new scaling law can be used to determine the entire air concentration profile given a minimal number of single-point measurements.

Flapping Flight

admin — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:37:40 +0000

As a moth flaps its wings, a vortex is generated on the leading edge of the wing. The flapping motion allows the vortex to remain attached and provide a lifting force. It is thought that the lifting force from the vortex is what allows moths and other animals with flapping wings to fly and hover. By studying the kinematic motions and the flow structures associated with flapping flight, the efficiency and capabilities of flapping micro air vehicles can be improved and expanded.