You might think that your blender is just a glorified mixer — but you couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, your blender exploits some interesting scientific concepts to break down your food, and these slow-motion videos help explain how it works.
Flip the switch, and the blender’s blades create a suction effect, pulling contents down before throwing it outwards. In turn, that creates massive shear stresses to break down food and large turbulence to mix it. That’s exactly what you can see in the slow-mo videos below. But there’s more! Fuck Year Fluid Dynamics explains:
[I]f you watch carefully, you’ll also see tiny bubbles spinning off the blades. These bubbles, formed by the pressure drop of fluid accelerated over the arms of the blades, are cavitation bubbles. When they collapse, or implode, they create localised shock waves that further break up the blender’s contents. This same effect is responsible for damage to boat propellers and lets you destroy glass bottles.
Watch the awesome slow-mo videos below to get a real feel the science of blending. [ChefStep via Wired via Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics]