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How a Swirling Tail Helps Microbes Swim
May 11, 2021•
Physics 14, s61
A microswimmer that rotates its body and tail in opposite directions can propel itself in elastic, non-Newtonian fluids.
J. Binagia/Stanford University
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Like human swimmers, microorganisms employ various techniques to propel themselves through fluids. But the fluids that these microswimmers navigate, such as mucus in the human body, are often complex and non-Newtonian, enabling strokes that wouldn’t work in a swimming pool. Now, Jeremy Binagia and Eric Shaqfeh of Stanford University have analyzed one such technique that works in complex, elastic fluids [1].
The researchers investigated a model swimmer made up of two differently sized spheres. Previous work had studied how a microswimmer of this shape would move through fluid when its swimming technique was driven by an external torque applied, for example, via a magnetic field. But Binagia and Shaqfeh looked at a mechanism that relied on no ex