{"id":3194,"date":"2009-08-24T03:00:24","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/?p=3194"},"modified":"2009-08-24T03:00:24","modified_gmt":"2009-08-24T08:00:24","slug":"the-aqueous-aragorn-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/3194","title":{"rendered":"The Aqueous Aragorn Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

Water Striders. Filmed in slow-motion, of course.<\/p>\n

There’s actually a bit of physics here, starting with the obvious, the reason they don’t sink: surface tension. Water is polar, so the molecules tend to attract each other, making the surface act like a series of springs and able to support small masses, up to the point that the attraction is overpowered.<\/p>\n

Once the strider starts moving, we can see some more physics in action:<\/p>\n

\"cimg0635-21\"<\/p>\n

The water strider is actually hard to see in this picture \u2014 it’s a little above and the the left of center. The black dots are a shadow of sorts. The insect would not cast much of a visible shadow if it were on a flat surface; it’s small and light will tend to diffract around the legs. But what’s happening here is that the feet make an indentation in the water and it turns the now-curved surface of the water into a lens. And the lens is concave, so the light diverges and leaves a dark spot because light has been directed away.<\/p>\n

The water strider has been moving, and this disturbs the water. We see the waves from this disturbance and the interference as two separate waves pass through each other.<\/p>\n

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video<\/em><\/object><\/p>\n

Once again, you’re seeing the effects displayed on the creek bed, rather than the surface. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Water Striders. Filmed in slow-motion, of course. There’s actually a bit of physics here, starting with the obvious, the reason they don’t sink: surface tension. Water is polar, so the molecules tend to attract each other, making the surface act … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,38,39,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-science","category-photos","category-physics","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}