Rocky, isolated islands disturb the atmosphere, sending air swirling off one side of the island and then the other. The effects are not always visible to the naked eye, but, Keep reading
Tag: vortex shedding
Walking in the Wake of a Cylinder
A cylinder in a flow produces a series of alternating vortices known as a von Karman vortex street. Changing the flow speed and rotating the cylinder both allow researchers to Keep reading
Vortex Arms
A fixed cylinder will shed alternating vortices in its wake, but one allowed to oscillate forward and backward in the flow instead sheds simultaneous vortices. The shape of the wake Keep reading
Swirls in the Wake
Rocky islands make excellent atmospheric swirls, as seen here around Guadalupe Island. Winds blowing in from the ocean get forced up and around the island’s topography, resulting in vortices that Keep reading
The Eerie Singing of the Golden Gate Bridge
Recent changes to the Golden Gate Bridge’s guardrails have created a new soundscape in the Bay Area. Under high winds, the bridge gives off an eerie, otherworldly wail that can Keep reading
Nighttime Streets
Clouds spiral behind the islands of Tenerife and Gran Canaria in this nighttime satellite imagery. Although it’s not entirely unusual to see these von Karman vortex street clouds in the wakes of Keep reading
Vibrating in the Flow
Objects can obviously affect flows, but that’s not a one-way street. Flows can also affect objects, even ones as simple a circular cylinder. If you live somewhere with traffic lights Keep reading
The Tacoma Narrows Bridge
One of the most dramatic and famous engineering failures of the twentieth century is also one of the most complicated: the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. This early suspension Keep reading
The Swimming of a Dead Fish
When I was a child, my father would take me trout fishing, and I spent hours marveling from the riverbank at the trouts’ ability to, seemingly effortlessly, hold their position Keep reading
Star Wars Aerodynamics
Science fiction is not always known for hewing to scientific fact, so it will probably come as little surprise that Star Wars’ ships have terrible aerodynamics. But it’s nevertheless fun Keep reading