motion

  • A painted mural shows a woman's eye and hair in bright colors on a brick wall.

    Tiny eye motions help us see a steady world

    Even though your eyes move constantly, you see the world as stable, not blurry. New research clarifies how tiny movements make it happen.

  • A swimmer does the butterfly stroke in an Olympic pool.

    ‘Butterfly bot’ swims 4X faster than past robots

    "Butterfly bot," a soft robot that swims the butterfly stroke, gets its inspiration from the biomechanics of the manta ray.

  • red rotini noodle

    Noodle bot gets through mazes on its own

    Soft ribbon robots that look like translucent rotini use heat to get around mazes without any help from humans or computer software.

  • Three swimmers race in a pool

    Cilia’s push turns sperm into super swimmers

    Carpets of tiny hairs called cilia that line the inside of the fallopian tubes give sperm the extra boost they need to be super swimmers, a new study shows.

  • People walk over the Millennium Bridge in London

    Why too many walkers cause bridges to wobble and sway

    Researchers have a new explanation for why pedestrian bridges wobble and sway: Too many people are crossing at once and simply trying not to fall over.

  • Fingers snap on a white background

    Finger snaps are one of the fastest motions humans can create

    "The finger snap occurs in only seven milliseconds, more than twenty times faster than the blink of an eye, which takes more than 150 milliseconds."

  • A researcher twists the clear, gel-like liquid metal

    Soft, stretchy liquid metal turns motion into power

    A new liquid metal can turn motion into energy, even when completely submerged in water.

  • A young man wearing a baseball cap sits in the backseat of a car watching video on his phone at night.

    How will self-driving cars deal with motion sickness?

    What good will self-driving cars be if your ride makes you feel motion sick? Now, researchers are figuring out how to give future riders a smoother trip.

  • screenshot of sea monkeys in beaker

    ‘Sea Monkeys’ show how tiny critters churn ocean

    Swarms of tiny organisms like krill can create enough turbulence to redistribute ocean waters. The idea "has been almost heretical in oceanography."

  • drain and plug

    Ocean ‘bathtub drains’ pull flotsam together

    “It is much like the spinning vortex that forms in a bathtub: Water sinks in a small region, but water from much larger region moves toward the vortex...”