Air Tiwow @airtiwow - Tumblr Blog

imonmywayup

Lots of cool stuff out in the desert.

airtiwow

Landing on a salt flat, still on my bucket list.

chewbacca

Spike Lee and Samuel L. Jackson when ‘BlacKkKlansman’ wins Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars

airtiwow

It should be mandatory by international law to love Sam Jackson.

spockvarietyhour

Rasing the Gate, “Memento”

emotionalempowerer-blog

I could watch this all day.

shipwreckedsamuel

@d3ath-of-a-strawb3rry

fuckyeahfluiddynamics

The atmosphere above us is a thin layer enclosing our planet, but it roils with activity and energy. Photographer Camille Seamon captures the grandeur of our turbulent skies in her storm shots. These dramatic atmospheric vistas – including mammatus clouds (top), swirling supercells (middle), and turbulent storm clouds (bottom) – are all driven by the flow of heat and moisture. (Image credit: C. Seaman; via Colossal)

airtiwow

I know it’s been centuries since I last posted photos of my own here, but I HAD to share these.

fuckyeahfluiddynamics

Spiders are often among the first colonists on newly formed volcanic islands. Thanks to their aerial skills, they are able to travel nearly anywhere by ballooning on strands of their own silk. Exactly how spiders as large as 20 milligrams manage this is still relatively known. A new study shows that crab spiders, like any careful aviator, use a foreleg to monitor wind conditions for 5 or more seconds before attempting take-off. The spiders will only spool out ballooning threads if the wind is warm and gentle. Wind speeds higher than 3 meters per second are an automatic no-go. When the spider decides conditions are favorable, they release as many as 60 nanoscale fibers that are several meters in length. The wind catches the silks and lifts them away to their next adventure. (Image credit: Science Magazine, source; research credit: M. Cho et al.)

airtiwow

Hello arachnophobes, spiders can fly.

fuckyeahfluiddynamics

Trees are incredible organisms, and the physics behind them baffled scientists until relatively recently. Inside trees, there is a constant flow of water up from the roots, through the xylem and out the leaves. We often think of atmospheric pressure and capillary action as the mechanisms for pushing water up against the force of gravity, but this is not how trees work. Instead, the evaporation of water from the tree’s leaves actually pulls the entire water column up the tree. Water molecules really like sticking to one another, which actually allows them to hold together under this tension.

The result of all this pulling is a negative pressure inside the tree, and, with some clever manipulation, it’s possible to measure just how negative the pressure inside a tree is using a device called a pressure bomb. You can see the whole process in action in the Science IRL video below. The magnitude of a tree’s negative pressure fluctuates over a day, depending on how quickly it’s losing water, but typical values can range from 2-3 atmospheres of negative pressure to 17 or more! To get the equivalent (positive) pressure, you’d have to be nearly 2.7 kilometers under water. (Image and video credit: Science IRL)