Mirjam Sophia Glessmer

Category: kitchen oceanography

#KitchenOceanography

January 1, 2025
/ˈkɪtʃɪn ˌəʊʃəˈnɒɡrəfi/ noun Experimenting with ocean physics using only household items Observing oceanographic processes in, or during the preparation of, food and drinks DIYnamics: Rotating tank experiments based on LEGO…
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Coffee in #KitchenOceanography

February 16, 2021
For some reason my workflow regarding all things #KitchenOceanography and #WaveWatching changed at the beginning of this year. I started editing frames on the pictures I’m posting on Instagram, and,…
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About #KitchenOceanography

February 15, 2021
At the end of last year, I did a poll on Twitter, asking what people would like to see more of in 2021: Kitchen oceanography, wave watching, teaching & scicomm…
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Rheoscopic fluid

September 29, 2020
I just wanted to quickly clean my tank… But then it was too pretty, so I guess the rheoscopic (“current showing”) fluid gets to stay a little longer. What an…
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#KitchenOceanography as #FieldWorkFix

September 4, 2020
This is the longer version of the (A4!) poster that I am presenting on behalf of myself, Kjersti Daae, Elin Darelius, Joke Lübbecke and Torge Martin at the #FieldWorkFix conference next…
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Alles andere als trockene Theorie (Repost)

August 31, 2020
Unser “DryTheory2JuicyReality” Projekt wurde durch den PerLe-Fonds für Lehrinnovation gefördert. Hier ist ein Repost eines Beitrages, den ich für den Blog “Einfach gute Lehre” geschrieben habe. „Meeresströmungen im Wassertank“: Lehre, die Wissenschaft…
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Solid body rotation

May 30, 2020
Several of my friends were planning on teaching with DIYnamics rotating tables right now. Unfortunately, that’s currently impossible. Fortunately, though, I have one at home and enjoy playing with it enough…
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Thermal forcing vs rotation

May 23, 2020
The first experiment we ever ran with our DIYnamics rotating tank was using a cold beer bottle in the center of a rotating tank full or lukewarm water. This experiment is…
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Ekman layers in my kitchen

May 21, 2020
Several of my friends were planning on teaching with DIYnamics rotating tables right now. Unfortunately, that’s currently impossible. Fortunately, though, I have one at home and enjoy playing with it enough…
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Rossby-#WaveWatchingWednesday

May 20, 2020
Several of my friends were planning on teaching with DIYnamics rotating tables right now. Unfortunately, that’s currently impossible. Fortunately, though, I have one at home and enjoy playing with it enough…
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What’s #kitchenoceanography all about?

July 9, 2019
Preparing my talk at the Science in Public conference in Manchester… A definition of kitchen oceanography /ˈkɪtʃɪn ˌəʊʃəˈnɒɡrəfi/ noun Kitchen oceanography is where my blog “Adventures in oceanography and teaching” —…
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Experiment: Eddy in a jar

August 6, 2018
Rotating experiments in your kitchen. Eddies, those large, rotating structures in the ocean, are pretty hard to imagine. Of course, you can see them on many different scales, so you…
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Cloud in a bottle experiment

March 4, 2018
Guest post by Susann Tegtmeier (written two months ago, I just never got around to posting it. Sorry!) — No one likes clouds when they bring rain, but what if…
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Of cupcakes and ice cores

December 2, 2017
For a popular science presentation on climate change, I needed a simple illustration for how ice cores can be used as archives of past climates. Luckily, my sister and family…
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Café Latte 

August 10, 2017
Even though most people think I am crazy, I always love watching the convection pattern develop in a hot drink.
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Pythagoras’ Cup

February 28, 2017
Yep, I’ve been playing this weekend :-) After seeing this on Facebook a while back I just couldn’t resist… Enjoy! :-)
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Evaporating sea water

January 3, 2017
How much salt is there in sea water? What concentration do you need before crystals start forming? What will those crystals look like? I am sure those are the kind…
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A string of bubbles

April 12, 2016
Have you ever noticed champagne bubbles that form as a string right in the middle of the glass and hardly anywhere else? This leads to the very cool pattern you…
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On buoyancy

September 2, 2015
This is an experiment that Martin brought to Ratzeburg and that he let me use on my blog: Using a beam balance to talk about buoyancy. So at first we…
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Strawberry ice cream crystals

August 12, 2015
My new favorite thing is to put strawberries through a blender and then freeze small portions of that to eat as ice cream later. It is super yummy plus you…
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Stream lines and paper towels

July 15, 2015
We’ve been talking about stream lines a lot recently (see for example the flow around a paddle or flow around other stuff). I’ve always heard stories about a neat way of…
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More mystery tubes

June 26, 2015
My mystery tube blog post seems to have inspired a lot of people. How awesome! This is what my parents sent me: And my friend Kristin Richter took the whole thing…
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Vortex streets on a plate

February 23, 2015
You might think that three hours of canoe polo on a Saturday morning would be enough water for the day, but no.  As when I did the experiment for the “eddies in a…
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Eddies in a jar

January 28, 2015
Rotating experiments in your kitchen. Do you know those Saturday mornings when you wake up and just know that you have to do oceanography experiments? I had one of those…
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Fog and clouds in a bottle

November 21, 2014
A little bit of hands-on meteorology for a change. This post is inspired by www.planet-science.com‘s “fog in a bottle” and “make a cloud in a bottle” posts. Inspired meaning that…
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Tides in a glass

October 31, 2014
A very simple experiment to show how waves can travel around an ocean basin. I wrote these instructions for a book project that I was lucky enough to get involved…
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Melting ice cubes, again

October 3, 2014
Somehow I am stuck on this demonstration! I can’t let go of this experiment. Last time I posted about it, someone (Hallo Papa!) complained about the background and how I…
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The icy elevator

September 29, 2014
Weird things happening when ice cubes melt. Remember I said that there were weird and wonderful things going on when I last ran the melting ice cubes in salt and…
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Melting ice cubes reloaded

September 26, 2014
Or why you should pay attention to the kind of salt you use for your experiments. The melting ice cubes in salt and fresh water is one of my favorites that…
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Salt fingering

August 28, 2014
My absolute favorite experiment ever: salt fingering. I know I’ve said it before about another experiment, even today, but this is my absolute favorite experiment and I still get endlessly…
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Surface tension with a twist

August 11, 2014
The coolest surface tension demonstration yet! Just because it is AWESOME. Enjoy! Watch the video here. oh, you didn’t think I would only post one video, did you? ;-)
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Capillary effects

July 4, 2014
When hydrostatics just doesn’t explain things. Occasionally one notices water levels in straws that are slightly above the water levels in the glass. And of course – even though we…
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Refraction of light in water.

May 7, 2014
What water can do to light. In the last post, I showed you a couple of pictures of a vase filled with dandelions. Turns out this might not have been enough of…
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Dandelions

May 5, 2014
Making dandelion stem spirals. It’s sunny, dandelions are everywhere and not every post on this blog has to be about oceanography in the strictest sense (although you’ll see the connection…
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Vacuum pumps

April 20, 2014
What else did you think we tested them on? Before using my parents’ vacuum pumps (“vacuum” being used in a loose sense of the word…) on water in this post, we…
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Gases dissolved in water

April 14, 2014
A simple experiment to show that there are really gases dissolved in water. Luckily, my parents like to play at least as much as I do. So when I got…
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Tea and milk

March 26, 2014
More physics applications  connected to tea. After the frustrations of taking pictures of steam in my last post, I decided that I could use the very same cute mug to…
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Blowing on hot tea

March 24, 2014
Why would it be interesting to talk about this in a science class? As a kid I used to wonder why blowing on a hot soup or beverage should be…
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Advection fog

March 21, 2014
When warm, moist air is advected and brought in contact with colder surfaces. Recently I’ve been starting to think about a course I’ll be teaching later this year, and how…
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Hydraulic jump II

March 17, 2014
More movies of my kitchen sink. I am really fascinated by the hydraulic jumps in my kitchen sink. I can’t believe I haven’t used this before when I was teaching!…
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An overturning experiment

March 3, 2014
A simple experiment that shows how the large-scale thermally-driven ocean circulation works. Someone recently asked me whether I had ideas for experiments for her course in ocean sciences for non-majors.…
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Barometer problem.

January 31, 2014
Still talking about hydrostatic pressure. Yes, I am not done with hydrostatic pressure yet! One of the problems students were given in the study “Identifying and addressing student difficulties with…
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Hydrostatic pressure

January 29, 2014
What are students not understanding about hydrostatic pressure? Tomorrow (today by the time this post will go online, I guess) I will present the paper “Identifying and addressing student difficulties…
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Cartesian diver

January 20, 2014
Compressibility of water and air. Today I want to talk about the different compressibilities of water and air. Actually, no, I just want to show you an experiment. One way…
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Non-newtonian fluids.

January 17, 2014
Playing with cornstarch and water. The other day my mom and I played with cornstarch and water. I have always been wanting to experiment more with non-newtonian fluids, and then…
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Salt fingering – DIY

January 13, 2014
How to easily set up the stratification for the salt fingering process. Setting up stratifications in tanks is a pain. Of course there are sophisticated methods, but when you want…
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Salt fingering

January 8, 2014
How to show my favorite oceanographic process in class, and why. As I mentioned in this post, I have used double-diffusive mixing extensively in my teaching. For several reasons: Firstly,…
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Double-diffusive mixing

January 6, 2014
On the coolest process in oceanography. My favorite oceanographic process, as all of my students and many of my acquaintances know, is double-diffusive mixing. Look at how awesome it is:…
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Mediterranean outflow

December 2, 2013
Students demonstrating the mediterranean outflow in a tank. As reported earlier, students had to conduct experiments and present their results as part of CMM31. Niklas chose to demonstrate the mediterranean outflow…
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The broken spoon

November 6, 2013
Refraction of light in water. I just happened to notice this the other day, so I thought I’d take a picture and share it with you. It is amazing how…
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Progressive waves on a rope

October 5, 2013
Visualization of progressive waves: wave form and energy move forward while the rope itself stays in place. When I talked about waves in GEOF130 recently, in order to explain the…
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Measuring temperature.

September 28, 2013
Students build thermometers. As described in this post, I like to have students build “instruments” to measure the most oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity and density). I find that they appreciate oceanographic…
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Measuring salinity

September 27, 2013
Students evaporate water to measure the salinity of a water sample. As described in this post, I like to have students build “instruments” to measure the most oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity…
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Measuring density

September 26, 2013
Students build a device to measure density. As described in this post, I like to have students build “instruments” to measure the most oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity and density). I…
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Tasting sea water reloaded

September 25, 2013
Doing the “tasting sea water” activity again with a different group of students. A very good introduction to the concept of salinity is the “tasting sea water” activity. Last time…
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Internal waves in a bottle

September 18, 2013
Internal waves are shown in simple 0.5l bottles. Waves travel on the interface between fluids of different densities and the phase speed of those waves depends on the density difference…
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How mountains form

September 17, 2013
A very simple visualization of rock folding. See? When I said “very simple” I meant “very simple”. But it does help explain why sometimes rock layers are not nice and…
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Forskningsdagene are almost upon us

August 30, 2013
Preparations for experiments to be shown at the science fair “forskningsdagene” are under preparation. Forskningsdagene, a cooperation between research institutes and schools, science centers and other educational places, will take…
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Heat capacity of air and water

August 28, 2013
Hands-on activity to better understand the concept and consequences of heat capacity. Also a great party trick. Imagine you take a balloon. Any kind of normal balloon. You blow it…
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And even more on density

August 28, 2013
My favorite experiment. Quick and easy and very impressive way to illustrate the influence of temperature on water densities. Today in the “introduction to oceanography” (GEOF130) we conducted my favorite…
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More on density

August 28, 2013
Extremely simple experiment to illustrate the effect of density differences. At room temperature, will coke cans float or sink in freshwater? And how about coke light? Btw, this experiment is…
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Tasting sea water

August 28, 2013
Hands-on activity on sea water salinity In the first lecture of the “introduction to oceanography” GEOF130 course 2013, we investigated water samples from four different regions: The Mediterranean, the tropical…
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