Related papers: Paradoxical popups: Why are they hard to catch?
We propose a rigorous theory for the optical trapping by optical vortices, which is emerging as an important tool to trap mesoscopic particles. The common perception is that the trapping is solely due to the gradient force, and may be…
Astrophysical black holes do not exist in vacuum, and their motion is affected by the galactic environment. As a black hole moves it attracts stars and matter, creating a wake that, in turn, exerts an effective friction slowing down the…
The problem of a bouncing ball on a non-planar surface is investigated. We discovered that surface undulation adds a horizontal component to the impact force, which acquires a random character. Some aspects of Brownian motion are found in…
Experiments are done by colliding a swinging bat with a stationary baseball or softball. Each collision was recorded with high-speed cameras, from which the post-impact speed, launch angle, and spin of the ball could be determined. Initial…
Fast microjets can emerge out of liquid pools from the rebounding of drop-impact craters, or when a bubble bursts at it surface. The fastest jets are the narrowest and are a source of aerosols both from the ocean and a glass of champagne,…
Micron sized, neutral, non-dielectric particles immersed in a viscous fluid can be trapped in the focal plane of a Gaussian beam. A particle can absorb energy from such a beam with a large radial intensity gradient, resulting in substantial…
Prominence bubbles are cavities rising into quiescent prominences from below. The bubble-prominence interface is often the active location for the formation of plumes, which flow turbulently into quiescent prominences. Not only the origin…
We report on quasi-two-dimensional granular systems in which either one or two large balls is fluidized by an upflow of air in the presence of a background of several hundred smaller beads. A single large ball is observed to propel…
We report optical trapping and transport of nanoparticles in a moving interference pattern in hollow-core photonic crystal fiber at atmospheric pressure, when competition between trapping and drag forces causes the particle velocity to…
Inspired by the observation of intricate and beautifully dynamic patterns generated by food coloring on clean glass slides, we have investigated the behavior of propylene glycol and water droplets on high energy surfaces. In this fluid…
In Supplee's submarine paradox, a naive argument based on Lorentz contraction leads to a contradiction that a fast submarine should sink in the water's reference frame but float in the submarine's reference frame. Due to the submarine's…
Peculiar velocities change the expansion rate of any observer moving relative to the smooth Hubble flow. As a result, observers in a galaxy like our Milky Way can experience accelerated expansion within a globally decelerating universe,…
We discovered that when a pair of small particles is optically levitated, the particles execute a dance whose motion resembles the orbits of balls being juggled. This motion lies in a plane perpendicular to the polarization of the incident…
We study the mechanism behind dynamical trappings experienced during Wang-Landau sampling of continuous systems reported by several authors. Trapping is caused by the random walker coming close to a local energy extremum, although the…
Inspired by the turf-ball interaction in golf, this paper seeks to understand the bounce of a ball that can be modelled as a rigid sphere and the surface as supplying an elasto-plastic contact force in addition to Coulomb friction. A…
New measurements are presented of the lift on a spinning baseball. The experiment utilizes a pitching machine to project the baseball horizontally; a high-speed motion capture system to measure the initial velocity and angular velocity and…
We study quantum effects on moduli dynamics arising from the production of particles which are light at special points in moduli space. The resulting forces trap the moduli at these points, which often exhibit enhanced symmetry. Moduli…
We investigate the dynamics of micron-scale drops pushed across a hydrophobic or superhydrophobic surface. The velocity profile across the drop varies from quadratic to linear with increasing height, indicating a crossover from a sliding to…
A classic problem of the motion of a projectile thrown at an angle to the horizon is studied. Air resistance force and Magnus force are taken into account with the use of the quadratic laws. We consider the asymptotic motion of the…
A small and light polystyrene ball is released without initial speed from a certain height above the floor. Then, it falls on air. The main responsible for the friction force against the movement is the wake of successive air vortices which…