Researchers solve mystery of odd behavior by droplets of food coloring (2015)

Re:Researchers solve mystery of odd behavior by droplets of ... by himinlomax on Friday November 20, 2020 @04:22AM (#25158759)

I hate these pointless analogies in popular science reporting. "droplets of fluid will move like performers in a dance choreographed" -- it may sound good to the writer but it just comes across as pretentious and does not help explain anything. In general those facile analogies do in fact make things muddier. The only exceptions is when they are stated along with how they are different from the phenomenon being described. Here, no point, except to pad the word count I guess.

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Re:Researchers solve mystery of odd behavior by droplets of ... by teekert on Friday November 20, 2020 @04:39AM (#25158861)

I agree, it would be nice if they just explained where the energy comes from and how it flows to drive this, imho the most interesting question. But I guess "a mystery" draws a bigger public. For me it just means frustration after watching the movie.

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Re:Researchers solve mystery of odd behavior by droplets of ... by TeMPOraL on Friday November 20, 2020 @04:46AM (#25158899)

I guess it's a difference in the target audience. They're writing for the people who will look at it and exclaim, "oh, how beautiful deep and profound this Science is".

Myself, I look at science articles with questions that boil down to "how can we make use of it to build something cool?". I look for explanations, even coarse, of what's going on - what are the critical conditions that need to be preserved for the phenomenon to appear? What are the hard constraints? So yeah, I prefer less artistic but confusing analogies.

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Re:Researchers solve mystery of odd behavior by droplets of ... by xbar on Friday November 20, 2020 @10:32AM (#25161393)

I think you are right. These are marketing pieces, not journals. I do not think that's not bad at all. I am certain the journal article for this story satisfies demands of rigor.

But I like being able to take this piece to my 10 year-old who may focus her 5th grade science project on yogurt and getting her inspired to be curious about the fluids she plays with every day.

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Re:Researchers solve mystery of odd behavior by droplets of ... by teekert on Friday November 20, 2020 @03:18PM (#25164485)

Exactly, I mean you can just add a small animation of how evaporation in 1 component is faster and pushes the two-bubble structure in one direction. It runs untill it gets too cold (endothermic reaction). Or something like that.. but correct ;)

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