Brown Physicists Explain How Bacteria Swim

Imagine yourself swimming in a pool: It’s the movement of your arms and legs, not the viscosity of the water, that mostly dictates the speed and direction that you swim. For tiny organisms, the situation is different. Microbes’ speed and direction are subjected more to the physical vagaries of the fluid around them. “For bacteria to swim in water,” explained Jay Tang, associate professor of physics at Brown University, “it’s like us trying to swim through honey.

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Filed under: Biology on November 21st, 2008