Ever wondered about the shape of the splash formed as your pour over coffee drips into the brew? Or considered what it looks like if you blast falling drops with a high powered laser? Well, now you can discover these and more in this year’s videos submitted to the annual meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Fluid Dynamics. You can see the full gallery here, and this year’s prize winners here, but below are some of 2020’s entries that have a particular relevance for coffee or cafes.
I hope you enjoy watching some beautiful physics.
Brewing a pour over? Watch the drips
As you watch each drop falling into the coffee below, some produce a splash, some bounce on the surface and some just fall without much effect. Watch drops entering a puddle of water in slow motion to see what happens as each drop splashes:
Mocha Diffusion: An experiment you can do in your kitchen
Mocha diffusion is a process for decorating ceramics, but if you have some food colouring and some time, perhaps you can do similar experiments at home.
If you came along to the first Coffee & Science evening at Amoret coffee in June 2019, you will have an idea what this is about. For those of you who didn’t make it, a similar experiment can be done at home (instructions here) and while we didn’t adapt it at the time to the artificial boats shown here, there is no reason that you cannot improve upon that experiment and replicate this one. But if you do, please do let me know how you get on.
How does a liquid flow down a string? In this experiment, the authors varied the diameter of the liquid flow and the position of the string to show some beautiful effects with fluid flow. It would be tricky to adapt this to coffee as I think that in order to see the effects shown here, you would need to have a very viscous fluid. On the other hand, why not try and let us know how you get on.
It is 2020 after all. There were quite a few videos imaging the air flow around breathing, talking and coughing people. Some of the videos compared types of mask, some imaged singers in addition to the coughing people. You can see other videos in the full gallery here. But, as many of us are having to, or deciding to wear masks while we pop into get a coffee, you may want to see the effect that they have on the air flow surrounding the mask wearer.
And finally. Don’t try this at home
Ever wanted to smash a droplet with a highly focussed laser? Now you don’t have to but can watch what happens here: