Quantcast
ZME Science
  • CoronavirusNEW
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact
No Result
View All Result
ZME Science

No Result
View All Result
ZME Science
No Result
View All Result
Home Science News

Scientists develop “water tractor beam”

No one has ever studies this before, even though anyone can replicate the experiment in a bathtub. Researchers have developed a water tractor beam for which no mathematical model exists yet.

Dragos Mitrica by Dragos Mitrica
August 11, 2014
in News, Physics

Physicists have created a groundbreaking water tractor beam technology, which could have very important applications in confining oil spills and manipulating floating objects.

Dr. Horst Punzmann and team leader Prof. Michael Shats, at the ANU wave tank.

If you’ve ever tried to retrieve a floating ball or some other object while you are swimming, you know how difficult and frustrating it can be sometimes. Well, researchers didn’t set out to improve your beach game experience, but were trying to control water flow patterns with simple wave generators. In the end, they were able to move floating objects at will – basically developing a “water tractor beam”.

“We have figured out a way of creating waves that can force a floating object to move against the direction of the wave,” said Dr Horst Punzmann, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering, who led the project. “No one could have guessed this result,” he said.

They tested the results with a classic table tennis ball floating in a wave tank, and reported that it gave them a unique way of controlling things floating on water. Further experimentation with the ping pong ball revealed the exact frequency and amplitude of the waves required to move the ball in the wanted direction. In the end, they were able to fully control moving the ball towards or against the wave generator – that is moving the ball against the generated waves.

“We found that above a certain height, these complex three-dimensional waves generate flow patterns on the surface of the water,” Professor Shats said. “The tractor beam is just one of the patterns, they can be inward flows, outward flows or vortices.”


The results were quite surprising – as was the fact that apparently no one studied this in detail before.

“It’s one of the great unresolved problems, yet anyone in the bathtub can reproduce it,” said Punzmann. “We were very surprised no one had described it before.”

The interesting fact is that there is currently no mathematical model to describe this movement. This is the next step in the study- understanding the underlying math.

Get more science news like this...

Join the ZME newsletter for amazing science news, features, and exclusive scoops. More than 40,000 subscribers can't be wrong.

   

Scientific Reference: Horst Punzmann, Nicolas Francois, Hua Xia, Gregory Falkovich, Michael Shats. Generation and reversal of surface flows by propagating waves. Nature Physics, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nphys3041

Dragos Mitrica

Dragos Mitrica

Dragos has been working in geology for six years, and loving every minute of it. Now, his more recent focus is on paleoclimate and climatic evolution, though in his spare time, he also dedicates a lot of time to chaos theory and complex systems.

Follow ZME on social media

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
  • More

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Coronavirus
  • News
  • Environment
    • Climate
    • Animals
    • Renewable Energy
    • Eco tips
    • Environmental Issues
    • Green Living
  • Health
    • Alternative Medicine
    • Anatomy
    • Diseases
    • Genetics
    • Mind & Brain
    • Nutrition
  • Future
  • Space
  • Feature
    • Feature Post
    • Art
    • Great Pics
    • Design
    • Fossil Friday
    • AstroPicture
    • GeoPicture
    • Did you know?
    • Offbeat
  • More
    • About
    • The Team
    • Advertise
    • Contribute
    • Our stance on climate change
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact

© 2007-2019 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.