Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Recipe for Making Symetrical Holes in Water

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the welcome-to-sunday-morning dept.

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."

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Sloppy reporting. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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!
    1. Re:Sloppy reporting. by MrShaggy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
    2. Re:Sloppy reporting. by i_should_be_working · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. Just a resonance? by mangu · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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?