Rafts of sea ice follow swirling eddies in this satellite image of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Just as with phytoplankton blooms and sediment, this thin sea ice can be Keep reading
Tag: eddies
Colorful Dissipation
Colorful eddies swirl in this short video from photographer Karl Gaff. Formed near the boundary at the bottom of the frame, these eddies act to dissipate some of the energy Keep reading
Ice Rings Caused By Underlying Eddies
Observations of strange ice rings on Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake, have puzzled scientists for decades. Surveys of satellite imagery have revealed rings on Baikal and two other lakes Keep reading
An Introduction to Turbulence
With some help from Physics Girl and her friends, Grant Sanderson at 3Blue1Brown has a nice video introduction to turbulence, complete with neat homemade laser-sheet illuminations of turbulent flows. Grant Keep reading
Can Zooplankton Mix Oceans?
Krill and other tiny marine zooplankton make daily migrations to and from the ocean surface. Previously, models of ocean mixing ignored these migrations; these animals are tiny, researchers argued, so Keep reading
Sedimentary Swirls
Sediment swirls in Bear Lake caught the eye of an astronaut aboard the International Space Station last year. Bear Lake is situated in the Rocky Mountains, on the Idaho-Utah border. Keep reading
Watching the Boundary Layer Go By
In experiments, it can be difficult to track individual fluid structures as they flow downstream. Here researchers capture this spatial development by towing a 5-meter flat plate past a stationary Keep reading
Mixing the Southern Ocean
Motion in the ocean is driven by many factors, including temperature, salinity, geography, and atmospheric interactions. While global currents dictate much of the large-scale motion, it’s sometimes the smaller scales Keep reading
Visualizing Ocean Currents
Researchers used computational models of ocean currents to produce this video visualizing worldwide ocean surface currents from June 2005 through December 2007. Dark patterns under the ocean are representative of Keep reading
Surf’s Up
Diffusion of ink in water + Lego minifigs = an awesome example of fluid mechanics as art. (Photo credit: Alberto Seveso; via io9; thanks to Jennifer for the link!)