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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."

9 of 174 comments (clear)

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

    Aliens obviously use the plate to transmit geometrical patterns in an effort to contact us. This proves it beyond all doubt.

    1. Re:Interesting by jginspace · · Score: 5, Funny

      Aliens obviously use the plate to transmit geometrical patterns in an effort to contact us.

      I doubt they'd resort to those means. I'm sure they know that Skype has just introduced free calls to land lines and mobiles in the US and Canada until the end of the year: http://www.skype.com/company/news/2006/skype_freec alling.html

  2. 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.

  3. TFSummary says "Three-sided star..." by Khyber · · Score: 5, Funny

    I say "Triangle"

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    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
  4. Practical by suv4x4 · · Score: 5, Funny

    One practical use: really trippy washing machines

    practical

    adj 1: concerned with actual use or practice; 2: guided by practical experience and observation rather than theory; 3: being actually such in almost every respect; 4: having or put to a practical purpose or use;

  5. Pedantic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    pedantic

    adj 1: Like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning; 2: Being showy of one's knowledge, often in a boring manner; 3: Often used to describe a person who emphasizes their knowledge through the use of vocabulary; 4: Being finicky or picky with language.

    1. Re:Pedantic by suv4x4 · · Score: 5, Funny

      pedantic

      adj 1: Like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning; 2: Being showy of one's knowledge, often in a boring manner; 3: Often used to describe a person who emphasizes their knowledge through the use of vocabulary; 4: Being finicky or picky with language.


      joke: n. 1. Something said or done to evoke laughter or amusement, especially an amusing story with a punch line. 2. A mischievous trick; a prank. 3. An amusing or ludicrous incident or situation.

  6. 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.

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    I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
  7. Re:Sloppy reporting. by m0nstr42 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    Amen. I'm getting sick of people reading a /. summary of a summary of someone's legitimate results and deciding then and there that the original research (whose message is now 2x re-interpreted by the successive authors) is crap. These people do this for a living; many hold tenure positions at prestigious research institutions that are reserved for the brightest in their fields. Most of their really significant results appear in peer-reviewed publications. They're probably slightly more qualified to decide what is significant in their fields than you are.

    Popular media tends to mangle the crap out of stories in an effort to make it accessible to a wide variety of people. This is necessary for the sharing of information and the generation of public interest in scientific progress. If you're semi-intelligent and a particular story catches your eye, you should know enough to read between the lines a little bit. If you want to make any claims regarding validity, you need to find the original publications and make a slightly better assessment than a half-page web story can provide you with.