Philippe Marmottant
Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de
Physique
CNRS-Universite Grenoble Alpes
Service Courrier UGA
Pôle Phitem- Laboratoire LIPhy
CS 40 700
38058 GRENOBLE CEDEX 9
+33 (0)4 76 51 43 33
philippe.marmottant@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr
Hungry carnivorous plants,
part 1
Aquatic carnivorous bladderworts
(Utricularia species) catch prey animals with
suction traps. High speed video recordings show that
the plant "swallows" its prey in less than a
millisecond!
The trapdoor morphology is optimized for a fast
opening and closure, which we confirm by numerical
simulations. It is an elastic valve that buckles
inside (entailing opening) and then unbuckles
(closure). These precise motions are coupled with a
strong suction swirl causing accelerations up to
600g, and leaving little escape chances for prey
animals.
En
français !
Le piège ultra-rapide d'une
plante carnivore aquatique (Clip
en Version Francaise)
-
-Article published: "Ultra-fast underwater suction traps" [free preprint here] in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
The ultrasonic dance of
bubbles
Under ultrasound, bubbles pulsate
and vibrate intensely. In the movie below we show
how they interact without contact, and how they
feature a surprising collective "dance" and a
crystalline self-organisation.
See "Acoustically
bound microfluidic bubble crystals" by D.
Rabaud, P. Thibault, M. Matthieu, P. Marmottant,
published in Physical Review Letters, 106, 134501
(2011).
Hungry carnivorous plants,
part 2
In this video, we show that aquatic
carnivorous plant swallow water after some time,
even if there are no prey animals available. For
more details consult the article on Plos
ONE.
News
-
-New 2025 Post-doc proposal "Forces from swelling plant seeds" and "Rupture of herb leaves" : see "Jobs" section
-
-Interview France Culture 8 oct 2024 La Science CQFD on Bioacoustics of plants
-
-Stay of artists in the lab: Lia Giraud and Térence Meunier on the song of fishes (le chant des poissons).
Fast acoustic tweezers
Strong acoustic waves can exert
forces. Here we show how shape ultrasound waves in
order to manipulate objects, without any contact, at
any desired position. See article in
Appl. Phys. Letters.
The walk and jump of
horsetail spores
(Equisetum, or preles in French):
a small movie showing the
spectacular effects of humidity changes on horsetail
spores. See also the article.
The origin of sounds from
trees:
We could show that the ultrasonic
noises by the wood of trees is due to cavitation
bubbles. See also the article.
Revealing the catastrophic
failure of leaf networks
During a period of drought, bubbles
may appear in the water network of plants! In this
video we describe a simple way to reveal the
development of these bubbles in a leaf. See also the
article in PNAS.
Soap Film Opera:
visualizing music with a soap film
Our colleague F. Elias designed nice
experiments on the effect of sound on soap
films. Here is a clip we have edited on the
experiment.
Swimming with an elastic
sphere
A sphere suddenly collapses when the
pressure inside is decreased, a phenomenon called
buckling. By repeating collapses and re-inflation
under water a sphere can propel itself, even in very
viscous fluids.
Physics in a cup of tea
[Film en français !] Ce film
documentaire présente des phénomènes intrigants
lorsque l'on trempe une tartine beurrée dans sa
tasse de thé, et comment cela mène à une
investigation de recherche en Physique. Voir aussi
la vidéo réalisée par Zeste de Science sur le sujet
par
le dessinateur Tim
Charx