The following post list the winners of WSC 2021.
Comment from the author (Bavand Keshavarz):
I am a post-doctoral lecturer/researcher in the department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. My research interests are in the areas of soft matter mechanics and fluid dynamics. Visualization of fluid phenomena is a great passion of mine. I often think about ideas that can help me visualize the hidden fluid patterns that are around us in our daily life but are either too fast or too subtle for us to notice. When a small water jet breaks up into individual droplets or collides into another jet the phenomenon happens in few microseconds which is too fast for human vision. Similarly, when we use a mixer and mix a liquid through rotation the fluid patterns are too subtle and rather invisible to our eyes. I explore these hidden patterns and make them visible to our naked eyes through methods such as high-speed flash photography or dye visualization. Inspired from Doc Edgerton (a giant in science photography), I use a high-voltage air-gap flash that releases a 20,000 volt arc in air in a fraction of a microsecond. By freezing time with the high-speed flash, all the fast and blurred patterns emerge still and clear in the image and we thus make the hidden underlying world visible to us.
When it comes to visualization in science, I really like the following quote from Philip Roth: “Seeing is believing and believing is knowing and knowing beats unknowing and the unknown.”. When I teach fluid mechanics at MIT I strive to give students a chance to learn by seeing and naturally photography of fluid phenomena has become a life passion for me. It is also an activity in which art meets science and that always fascinates me. I enjoy sharing these pictures with the greater community and a channel such as Wikimedia and events such as Science Competition are amazing resources for us to share and also enjoy many different visions of science and art.
Comment from the jury:
Droplet impact is a phenomenon that occurs in many natural and technological processes, such as rain, ink-jet printing or spray cooling. Many factors can affect the splashing patterns, such as surface roughness, surface wettability, ambient pressure, and droplet compressibility. The beauty and the symmetry of the images highlights the technical skills necessary for the production of such media, and the very accurate description helps the reader to focus all these aspects
Runners-up:
Bavand Keshavarz from USA.
Peeter Paaver from Estonia.
Anatoly Mikhaltsov from Russia.
Andrei Savitsky from Russia.
Buiobuione from Italy.
Adult of Common Ringlet (Coenonympha tullia) tagged by a number for a study using mark and recapture in the Drugeon valley. Pmau from Italy.
Picture files and more detailed descriptions can be found HERE.
Files were published under CC BY 4.0 license.
