Week in Geek - Low pressure pull
My weekly post for The Rachel Maddow Show.
Week in Geek: Low pressure pull edition
A team of engineers and biologists recently revealed that jellyfish pull rather than push their way through the water.
It has long been believed that the pulsations jellyfish make as they swim were acting to push off the water behind them to move forward. But a collaboration between Stanford engineers and Woods Hole biologists has found otherwise. Instead, it seems that jellyfish create pockets of low pressure behind their “heads” and so higher pressure water in front of them rushes around them to equal things out and in the process, they are propelled forward. The scientists found the same thing to be true for lamprey eels.
Also features: sheepdogs, wasps, hyperspace, and bouncing water droplets.
Read the full article here.
