The first ever camera footage from inside a centrifuge has revealed a new mystery in the physics of fluids.
A centrifuge is a standard piece of laboratory equipment that spins fluid samples at high speed to separate out their components. For instance, centrifuging a blood sample will separate the red blood cells from the white ones. This is because spinning produces the centrifugal force, the same force that pushes clothes towards the edges of a spinning washing machine drum. This acts on the components of the fluid to a differing degree depending on their densities, and so pulls those…
