In the 1960s, thanks mainly to MIT mechanical-engineering professor Ascher Shapiro ’38, PhD ’46, the world became captivated by the question of how a bathtub drains. Harold Edgerton captured this side ...

HYDRODYNAMICS Busy as they are sending a man to the fringes of space and the to bottom of the sea, routing disease and building bigger and better nuclear bombs. 20th centry scientists still find time ...

It was so large it could potentially swallow a boat. — -- The whirlpool from “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” has nothing on this one. A six to eight foot-diameter vortex was caught on camera at ...

PERENNIALLY one hears controversy regarding the direction of the vortex in the drain of the bath-tub or the kitchen sink. Some claim that the direction of swirl is always the same in the northern ...

Water swirling down a drain has exposed an elusive phenomenon long believed to appear in black holes. Light waves scattering off a rotating black hole can bounce off with more energy than they came in ...