Observe a fresh water layer (with your eyes, not a CTD!)
Sometimes you actually see fresh water layers (see with your eyes, not a CTD or some other instrument) floating on top of denser waters, not only in your kitchen and with the help of dye, but for real. In this case, you see the layers because the shadow of a pole appears twice — once on the surface itself, and once on the interface between the layers.
See below: Shadow on the surface between the red lines, on the interface between green lines, and the reflection on the surface between blue lines.
I took these pictures on a trip to Husum with my sister and her family.
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guitty says:
Cool coincidence!
I was looking around on a search engine to find good references images for painting shadows interacting with water. My keywords were “shadows on water”
My eye was caught by a photo, which turned out to be the one on top of this page, because it shows so well the physical properties of light interacting with muddy water, and the difference between what is shadow and what is reflection. That’s really useful as a painter! I really appreciated your explanation about the layers and density.
I got intrigued by your blog (now I want to read all the different experiments), and was surprised to see that you’re in Hamburg, where I was just a few months ago!
My job is painting backgrounds for animation films, and part of the team for my current job was located in Hamburg, so I was with them a few weeks. The weather was horrible but the people were so nice it made up for it.
I took a ride on the harbour ferry and loved it. I can imagine being fascinated with the physical properties of water if I lived there!
Mirjam says:
So cool, thank you for reaching out! I looked at your work, that is so interesting! As you saw, I have lots and lots of water picture, and a lot of thoughts on water, too, so if you ever want to discuss or bounce ideas, that would be super fascinating for me! And I would love to see what artwork the “shadows on water” search results in! :-)