Vortices are one of the most common structures in fluid dynamics. In this video, Dianna from Physics Girl explores an unusual variety of vortex you can create in a pool. Dragging a plate through the water at the surface creates a half vortex ring, which can be tracked either by the surface depressions created or by using food dye for visualization. Vortex rings are quite common, but a half vortex ring is not. The reason is that, ignoring viscous effects, a vortex filament cannot end in a fluid. The vortex must close back on itself in a loop, or, like the half vortex ring, the ends of the vortex must lie on the fluid boundary. It is possible to break vortex lines like those in smoke rings, but the lines will reattach, creating new vortex rings–just as they do in these vortex knots. (Video credit: Physics Girl; submitted by Tom)
Tag: vorticity
Reader Question: Wave Vortex
Reader unquietcode asks:
I saw this post recently and it made me wonder what’s going on. If you look in the upper right of the frame as the camera submerges, you can see a little vortex of water whirring about. Even with the awesome power of the wave rolling forward a little tornado of water seems able to stably form. Any idea what causes this phenomenon?
This awesome clip was taken from John John Florence’s “& Again” surf video. What you’re seeing is the vortex motion of a plunging breaking wave. As ocean waves approach the shore, the water depth decreases, which amplifies the wave’s height. When the wave reaches a critical height, it breaks and begins to lose its energy to turbulence. There are multiple kinds of breaking waves, but plungers are the classic surfer’s wave. These waves become steep enough that the top of the wave overturns and plunges into the water ahead of the wave. This generates the vortex-like tube you see in the animation. Such waves can produce complicated three-dimensional vortex structures like those seen in this video by Clark Little. Any initial variation in the main vortex gets stretched as the wave rolls on, and this spins up and strengthens the rib vortices seen wrapped around the primary vortex. (Source video: B. Kueny and J. Florence)
Shrinking Red Spot
Observations show Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is shrinking, most recently at a rate of more than 900 km a year. As it gets smaller, the storm is also changing shape and becoming more circular. Scientists don’t yet have an explanation for the shrinkage or its recent acceleration, but this is unsurprising given the rich complexity of the storm. For example, the source of the Red Spot’s longevity–it may be more than 300 years old–is still an open topic of research. Some of the most recent observations show smaller eddies feeding into the storm; the current hypothesis is that these eddies may be increasing the Red Spot’s dissipation and accelerating its breakup. (Photo credit: NASA/ESA; h/t to io9)
Forming a Vortex
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Vortex rings show up remarkably often in nature. In addition to being the playthings of dolphins, whales, scuba divers, humans, and swimmers, vortex rings appear in volcanic outbursts and spore-spreading peat mosses. Vortex rings even occur in blood flow through the human left ventricle in the heart. In each of these cases, the vortex ring is formed by impulsively accelerating fluid through a narrow opening, like the dolphin’s blowhole. The fluid at the edge of injected jet is slowed by friction with the quiescent surrounding fluid. The fluid at the edge of the jet then slips around the sides and into the wake of the faster-moving fluid, where it’s accelerated through the middle of the forming vortex ring. This spinning from the inside-out and back-in persists as long as the vortex is intact, and is part of what keeps the ring from dissipating. (Video credit: SeaWorld; submitted by John C.)
Vortex Ring Tricks
Vortex rings are wonderful at maintaining coherent vorticity while moving over significant distances. If you stand several meters from a foam cup and try blowing to knock it over, it’s not likely to budge. But move the air impulsively with a vortex cannon, and you can knock it over from the opposite side of the room. The same principle works underwater with added visual effect. Here an impulsive burst of air exhaled by the diver forms a bubble ring with vorticity strong enough to knock over a stack of rocks. It may look like a superpower, but this is science! Dolphins and whales are also known to play with this trick. For the non-scuba-divers among you, it’s also possible to learn to do it in a swimming pool. (Video credit: DjDeutchTv; h/t to coolsciencegifs)
Happy Valentine’s Day!
What can you do with a 7 x 7 grid of miniature vortex cannons? Why, make floating vortex hearts, of course. Happy Valentine’s Day from FYFD! (Video credit: D. Schulze/bitsbeauty; via Colossal)
The Bathtub Vortex
If you’ve ever watched a swirling vortex disappear down the drain of your bathtub and wondered what was happening, you’ll appreciate these images. This dye visualization shows a one-celled bathtub vortex, created by rotating a cylindrical tank of water until all points have equal vorticity before opening a drain in the bottom of the tank. A recirculating pump feeds water back in to keep the total fluid mass constant. Once a steady vortex is established, green dye is released from the top plate of the tank and yellow dye from the bottom. The green dye quickly marks the core of the vortex. Ekman layers–similar to the boundary layers of non-rotating flows–form along the top and bottom surfaces, and the yellow dye is drawn upward in a region of upwelling driven by Ekman pumping. (Photo credit: Y. Chen et al.)
Just a reminder for those at Texas A&M University: I will be giving a talk today Wednesday, October 2nd entitled “The Beauty of the Flow” as part of the Applied Mathematics Undergraduate Seminar series at 17:45 in BLOC 164.
Stingray Wakes
This numerical simulation shows a swimming stingray and the vorticity generated by its motion. Stingrays are undulatory swimmers, meaning that the wavelength of their motion is much shorter than their body length. Manta rays, in contrast, move their fins through a wavelength longer than their body length, making them oscillatory swimmers. Observe the difference in this video. To swim faster, stingrays increase the frequency of their undulation, not the amplitude. This is quite common among swimmers because increasing the amplitude also increases projected frontal area, which causes additional drag. Increasing the frequency of motion does not affect the projected area, making it the more efficient locomotive choice. (Video credit: G. Weymouth; additional research credit: E. Blevins; submitted by L. Buss)
Also, FYFD now has a Google+ page for those who prefer to follow along and share that way. – Nicole
Flow Over a Delta Wing
Fluorescent dye illuminated by laser light shows the formation and structure of vortices on a delta wing. A vortex rolls up along each leading edge, helping to generate lift on the triangular wing. As the vortices leave the wing, their structure becomes even more complicated, full of lacy wisps of vorticity that interact. Note how, by the right side of the photo, the vortices are beginning to draw closer together. This is an early part of the large-wavelength Crow instability. Much further downstream, the two vortices will reconnect and break down into a series of large rings. (Photo credit: G. Miller and C. Williamson)
H Booms
Holidays involving fireworks deserve high-speed videos of hydrogen explosions. Although Periodic Table of Videos focuses on the chemistry involved in setting hydrogen on fire, there are some lovely fluid dynamics on display, too. There’s turbulence, combustion (obviously), and, if you watch closely, you can even see the initial vorticity caused by the rubber’s burst twisting the growing flames. (Video credit: Periodic Table of Videos)
