Recipe for Making Symetrical Holes in Water

scottZed writes "Danish researchers found a simple way to make curiously shaped air holes in a bucket of water. Simply rig the bucket to have a spinning plate at the bottom, and depending on the speed, you can get an ellipse, three-sided star, square, pentagon, or hexagon. The effect may help explain such shapes seen in atmospheric disturbances on Earth and other planets. One practical use: really trippy washing machines."

Comments

Sloppy reporting.

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA:

Bizarre geometric shapes that appear at the centre of swirling vortices in planetary atmospheres might be explained by a simple experiment with a bucket of water.

The bucket explains nothing - it might replcicate atmospheric conditions to the point where it will be a good model to aid in understanding atmosphereic conditions.

This from a publication with the byline "the best in science journalism"

Bah!

Re:Sloppy reporting.

[MrShaggy]

Quoted from the article .." These natural structures have never been fully explained. Could they be produced by the effect observed by the Danish team? "I expect that similar conditions might apply in these atmospheric flows," says Bohr. But he admits that at this stage he doesn't understand the pattern-forming process well enough to be sure of the comparison.

Swinney, meanwhile, thinks that the process is unlikely to apply to large-scale flows such as that on Saturn, but might be relevant to smaller-scale phenomena such as tornadoes."

Seems that they realize that this is but baby steps, and there needs to be much more work done.

Re:Sloppy reporting.

[i_should_be_working]

It's how you decipher something that makes it an explanation.

Einstein's equations of general relativity don't really explain anything unless you understand the math. To anyone else, they're just kooky looking symbols. To many people these may just be buckets with spinning water in them. To these researchers they may turn out to be explanations.

Just a resonance?

[mangu]

Well, if you have waves in the bucket, and the circumference of the hole is a multiple of that wavelength, then it's very natural that this phenomenon should happen.

I'm curious about the researcher's name, Tomas Bohr, any relation to Niels?

Re:TFSummary says "Three-sided star..."

[Anonymous Coward]

" I say "Triangle" "

Not if you had actually read the article and seen the photos. It's not a triangle, or any other named shape in geometry. (except maybe a three-sided star...) ;)

This is a bachelors project

[infolib]

Hey, I know these guys! Way to go!

This just confirms my suspicion that the chance of a Nature publication is directly proportional to alcohol consumption. (Wonder what it takes to get on /.) OTOH, having an advisor from the Bohr family probably doesn't hurt.

The academic lowdown:

ArXiv preprint
The full B. Sc. project

Now, if only we could make 60gons...

Re:Wow

[Decaff]

Frequency of disappearances is not enough to say that a special explanation is not needed. The question was not "Are there more disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle?" but, "Are the circumstances of disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle unusual?"

It is the same question. If there are no more disapearances there, there is no need for any consideration of unusual circumstances. Unusual circumstances are only needed to explain unusual numbers of disapearances, and there aren't any. Looking for extraordinary explanations of ordinary statistics is unscientific and pointless.

Also, while people keep saying there are statistics, I haven't seen them, nor are sources for the statistics cited.

A good source of statistics is insurance payments for missing vessels: Lloyds of London claim no evidence of any special effect associated with the Bermuda Triangle area (if there were, ships would have to pay extra insurance to enter the area).

Re:TFSummary says "Three-sided star..."

[Mr Z]

It's a triangle just like a Y is a triangle.