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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."

4 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting Effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It looks like the end result of system resonance set up between the harmonics and the properties of water. It would be cool to artificially vary the viscosity of the water with polymers, or add salts to increase specific gravity to note the affect on the pattern properties. OK, some of you are thinking, this guy is a nut but it just proves how never ending the learning process is as it relates to even the simplest things observed in nature. I like it.

  2. Re:Just a resonance? by pheede · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes, he's the grandson of Niels Bohr. His two cousins, Henrik and Jakob Bohr, are also professors at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark.

  3. Re:Wow by Decaff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But seriously, what if in the ocean the waterflow is spinning very hard itself under certain conditions, wouldn't that be a possible explanation for the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle?

    You don't need an explanation for the disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle, at least no special explanation. The disappearances there occur at no greater frequency per unit of shipping or flight than anywhere else in the world.

  4. Re:Just a resonance? by ZombieWomble · · Score: 4, Interesting
    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.

    In that situation, there would be perfect axial symmetry as these wavelengths would be identical in all directions, giving a fixed circular standing wave pattern once the flow stabilised (given a symmetric bucket, obviously). However, in this case, we have a breakdown in axial symmetry, and instead have slowly rotating geometric shapes instead.