Blood coursing through vessels, lubricated cartilage sliding against joints, ink jets splashing on paper--living and nonliving things abound with fluids meeting solids. However important these liquid/solid boundaries may be, conventional methods cannot measure basic mechanical properties of these interfaces in their natural environments. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Minnesota have demonstrated a video method that eventually may be able to make measurements on these types of biological and industrial systems.
