Greetings, podcast listeners! This week's Physics Central Podcast is a short story I heard about at the APS March Meeting that just wrapped up in Denver, Colorado. A physicist at Cornell University is studying bull sperm, and is looking at a phase transition that the sperm undergo. Basically, in a relaxed fluid, the sperm are disorganized: they all point in different directions. But when the flow of the fluid is turned up to a certain "critical flow rate" the sperm spontaneously point upstream. This type of order/disorder transition is a physics specialty: learn about the transition, look for commonalities with other systems that also undergo transitions, learn something new about bull sperm. Listen to the podcast to hear more!
Greetings, podcast listeners! This week's Physics Central Podcast is a short story I heard about at the APS March Meeting that just wrapped up in Denver, Colorado. A physicist at Cornell University is studying bull sperm, and is looking at a phase transition that the sperm undergo. Basically, in a relaxed fluid, the sperm are disorganized: they all point in different directions. But when the flow of the fluid is turned up to a certain "critical flow rate" the sperm spontaneously point upstream. This type of order/disorder transition is a physics specialty: learn about the transition, look for commonalities with other systems that also undergo transitions, learn something new about bull sperm. Listen to the podcast to hear more!
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