Category: kitchen oceanography

I have had these two words on my mind over the last couple of days: “flexpert” and “pre-industrial”. Some thoughts about them here…

I had completely forgotten about a video that Kjersti and I produced in 2021 to prepare her students for rotating tank experiments by addressing a common misconception before they ever set foot in a lab. But since it is so hilarious and also such a throwback to how all our meetings looked for months and […]

/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 In more detail: 1. Experimenting with ocean physics using only household items #KitchenOceanography is an extremely useful type of experiments on oceanographic processes: those that […]

One day in the office at the Geophysical Institute in Bergen last Friday, and for the first time in a long time I am writing a little bit of oceanography and tank experiments again: My colleague Stefanie Semper and I published a SERC “Teach the Earth” activity on “ocean currents and overflows”! This activity is […]

A project near and dear to my heart is using the DIYnamics rotating tank experiments in across-course collaborations. “Older” students, who did experiments the previous year, are trained to then act as guides to “younger” students when they do experiments for the first time, thus lowering the threshold of engaging with equipment, acting as role […]

For all of you who know and love my “24 days of #KitchenOceanography” series (and for those who need to quickly look up what that was about and then fall in love with it ;-)) — you can now buy it as a book! The book contains 24 easy experiments, embedded in the bigger context […]

I did this demo for my freediving club Active Divers (and if you aren’t following us on Insta yet, that’s what I am taking all these pretty pictures for!): 1.5l PET bottle with holes punched in every 2cm, then filled with water. Looks cool and works pretty well (except the second hole from the bottom up, […]

Since our Denmark Strait tank experiment from 2013 (see here in a post from 2014!) is still the one I refer to when I want to point to pictures of such an overflow experiment, I decided to do the experiment again to take new (and hopefully better) pictures. Three experiments later, I am not sure […]

For the Christmas party of my freediving club, Active Divers, I made a freediving-themed #KitchenOceanography “escape game” (of sorts). If you are interested to use it for your own purposes, please feel free to contact me for detailed instructions and material lists etc! This is how it went: We formed teams with three players in […]

I have been a bit quiet on here recently, because I had so many exciting projects going on that I did not manage to document them in real time (well, not on here anyway, but partly on my Insta). One of those projects is on #KitchenOceanography with coffee, where I have compiled a lot of […]

I thought I had posted the picture below some time in winter already, but when I recently searched for it, I couldn’t find it. So either I didn’t post it, or I didn’t post any sensible search terms with it, in any case: It’s useless. So here we go again. Below you see two tea […]

When you post pictures of your* coffee on social media, the coolest things can happen! Yesterday I got a copy of this Chinese oceanography textbook for pupils in the mail. It’s called 探海观澜：海洋观测的奥秘 (“watching waves and exploring the ocean: the secret of ocean observations” — how cool a title is that??) and it’s featuring a […]

A “fortune teller” for #WorldOceanDay! What would you work on if you were an ocean scientist? And if you are an ocean scientist — are you doing the work you were destined for? ;-) Your favourite drink can give you the answer! Click on the image below to download a printable .pdf, and find out! […]

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, since I was most likely doing this on my computer anyway, scheduling the posts through a program on my computer, which meant that I was […]

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 tips, and other things. And 2/3rds of the respondents said they wanted more kitchen oceanography! So obviously my strategy was to do a photo shooting […]

When students have only one day at sea, it’s important to prepare them well for what will happen there so they get the chance to make the most of the experience. For example, let’s consider a one day student cruises just outside of Bergen. Students are divided in teams that use different types of instrumentation and […]

One of the few “behind the scenes” shots of me taking #WaveWatching pictures! See the super awesome current right at my feet? :-D⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Similar to kitchen oceanography, I believe that wave watching is a great tool in education and outreach, especially during times where activites have to be socially distant. My article “How to […]

Oh no, it’s already my last Treibholz podcast episode this year! We are looking at ice cubes frozen from fresh and salt water, and are having a lot of fun, as always when we do #KitchenOceanography! Thanks for having me, Ronja & Maxie!

I gave a talk withing iEarth’s seminar series to introduce myself to the network last week. And since it was the last lecture before the Christmas break, I tried to turn it into a fun event including kitchen oceanography and wave watching! Watch the recording at https://iearth.no/en/2020/12/17/iearth-digital-learning-forum-mirjam-glessmer/ or below:

Day 17 of my 24 days of #KitchenOceanography is about double-diffusive layering, and the post is using “go have a nice latte” as instructions. However, in times of Covid-19 (and a hard lockdown in Germany since Wednesday) that’s unfortunately impossible. And since Lars Henrik said that he was especially curious about this experiment, and today […]

Another episode of the Treibholz podcast (in german) with Ronja, Maxie and myself! We are doing Elin’s favourite experiment (ok, mine too), looking at ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water. What can we learn from that about the ocean? #KitchenOceanography

On today’s Treibholz podcast (in german), Maxie, Ronja and I are playing with #KitchenOceanography again: this time double-diffusive mixing, specifically salt fingering. We had a lot of fun and discovered a lot about experiments and how they seldomly show what one expected ;)

The new particle tracking app “Flow on the Go” became available for testing on iOS yesterday. And it is SO AWESOME!!! The idea is that particle that are advected in a flow can be used to visualize a flow field (similar to what we did when we were at the 13-m-diameter rotating swimming pool in […]

Check out today’s episode of Treibholz Podcast, where Maxie, Ronja and I talk about the oceanic overturning circulation and #KitchenOceanography (in german), while each of us is doing a similar experiment in her own home. Is podcasting a good format to convey what’s going on with our water, ice and dye? We’ll know soon! :D

Im “eMagazin für aktuelle Themen der Hochschuldidaktik” der Uni Kiel ist der Artikel “Praxisnähe dank digitaler Versuchsküche” von Phil Mertsching über Torge’s und mein Projekt “Dry Theory 2 Juicy Reality”, insbesondere die Umsetzung im letzten Jahr mit den Zoom-Konferenzen aus meiner Küche, erschienen, zusammen mit vielen anderen spannenden virtuellen und hybriden Formaten. Es lohnt sich, da […]

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 amazing toy :-) Check out the video at the bottom!!! Recipe after Borrero-Echeverry, Crowley & Riddick (2018), then added blue food dye.

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 Tuesday (September 8, 2020). If you would rather listen to the voiceover than read the transcript below, please feel free to do that below! (Thanks to […]

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 begreifbar macht Über eine Lehrinnovation, die auf Kleingruppenarbeit und „hands-on“-Praxiselemente setzte – und was in Zeiten von Covid-19 daraus wurde. In der Lehrveranstaltung „Atmosphären- und […]

Last year in pre-social distancing times, Torge and I brought hands-on rotating tank experiments into his “atmosphere and ocean dynamics” class. The “dry theory to juicy reality” project was a lot of fun — the affordable DIYnamics rotating tables are great to give students hands-on experiences in small groups and to see — by running […]

Torge and I are planning to run the “tilting of a frontal surface under rotation / cylinder collapse” experiment as “remote kitchen oceanography” in his class on Thursday, so I’ve been practicing it today. It didn’t work out quite as well as it did when Pierre and I were running it in Bergen years ago, […]

Last Thursday, Torge & I invited his “atmosphere & ocean dynamics class” to a virtual excursion into my kitchen — to do some cool experiments. As you know, I have the DIYnamics rotating table setup at home, so this is what it looked like: We did two experiments, the very boring (but very important) solid […]

A very common misconception when looking at atmosphere & ocean dynamics in a rotating tank is that the center of the tank represents one of the poles and the edge of the tank the equator. And there is one experiment that — I fear — might reinforce that misconception, and that is the one we […]

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 that I’m Playing with it Making videos of me playing with it Putting the videos on the internet Going to do video calls with my […]

Recently I had the privilege to work with photographer David Carrenon Hansen on pictures for an article that was published in SCIENCE NOTES Magazin today. This issue of the mono thematic, german science communication magazine is on “the sea”. And obviously, if you can’t be at, on, in the sea, you have to recreate it […]

This is the long version of the two full “low latitude, laminar, tropical Hadley circulation” and “baroclinic instability, eddying, extra-tropical circulation” experiments. A much shorter version (that also includes the end cases “no rotation” and “no thermal forcing”) can be found here. Several of my friends were planning on teaching with DIYnamics rotating tables right now. […]

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 really interesting because, depending on the rotation of the tank, it will display different regimes. For small rotations we get a low latitude, laminar, tropical […]

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 that I’m Playing with it Making videos of me playing with it Putting the videos on the internet Going to do video calls with my […]

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 that I’m Playing with it Making videos of me playing with it Putting the videos on the internet Going to do video calls with my […]

It’s #KitchenOceanography season! For example in Prof. Tessa M Hill‘s class at UC Davis. Last week, her student Robert Dellinger posted a video of an overturning circulation on Twitter that got me super excited (not only because as of now, April 15th, it has 70 retweets and 309 likes. That’s orders of magnitude more successful than any […]

The second coolest thing about #KitchenOceanography is, besides obviously the oceanography as the coolest part, that it can all be done at home, in your own kitchen (hence the name). Today, I’m contributing to the “virtuellen Gauß-AG” of Leibniz Universität Hannover, a vacation program on STEM topics, that, of course, has to be done from home […]

First of all, let me say how much I love having chats like the one Elin and I had over the weekend (which you only see the very beginning of above). I had gotten into a bit of a rut kitchen oceanography-wise, which, I am happy to report, is over now! Thanks, Elin! :-) One […]

I saw the idea for this experiment on Instagram (Max is presenting it for @glaeserneslabor) and had to try it, too! The idea is to put drops of dye into hot and cold water and observe how in hot water the dye is mixed a lot faster than in cold water — after all, molecules […]

Have you ever noticed how, if you stir your latte*, when you pull out the spoon it’s piping hot, yet there is no steam rising from the latte itself? That’s because the milk foam on top is such a good thermal insulator thanks to all the tiny air bubbles trapped in it. Cool, isn’t it? […]

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” — and my passion for science communication! — started. Here are definitions of the two most common meanings. 1. Experiments on processes related to the ocean […]

Showing double-diffusive mixing in tank experiments is a pain if you try to do it the proper way with carefully measured temperatures and salinities. It is, however, super simple, if you go for the quick and dirty route: Cream in tea! Even easier than the “forget the salt, just add food dye” salt fingering experiment […]

Some bathtub magic today! Let’s take a paper kitchen towel and an empty glass. Squish the paper towel into the empty glass, submerge it upside down into the water aaand… …when you take it up again, the paper towel is still completely dry! Surprise! And then my all time favourite, of course:

Inspired by the article “Affordable Rotating Fluid Demonstrations for Geoscience Education: the DIYnamics Project” by the Hill et al. (2018), I spent a fun Sunday afternoon with my friends Joke and Torge in their kitchen, playing with Legos, water and food dye. Turns out building a rotating table isn’t as easy as we had hoped, because my […]

Let’s talk about zonal jets! They keep popping into my life all the time right now, and that has got to mean something, right? Zonal jets, for all that are not quite familiar with the term, are fast-flowing currents (i.e. “jets”) that move along lines of constant latitude (therefore “zonal”). The occur in the ocean […]

After writing the blog post on sea ice formation, brine release and what ice cubes can tell you about your freezer earlier today, I prepared some more ice cubes (because you can never have too many ice cubes for kitchen oceanography!), and then happened to look into the freezer a couple of hours later. And this […]

Many of my kitchen oceanography experiments use dyed ice cubes, usually because it makes it easier to track the melt water (for example when looking at how quickly ice cubes melt in freshwater vs salt water, or for forcing overturning circulations). But the dyed ice cubes tell interesting stories all by themselves, too! Salt water […]

Now that I have introduced the new tag “kitchen oceanography: food related” to my blog, it’s time to add a couple new posts to that category. And today I have a fun post for you! But first, what does “kitchen oceanography” even mean? Kitchen oceanography /ˈkɪtʃɪn ˌəʊʃəˈnɒɡrəfi/ noun Experiments on processes related to the ocean […]

Sometimes sitting in a café for a work meeting with #lieblingskollegin Julia can lead to unexpected discoveries of oceanographic processes — in my latte! It’s those little things that inspire blog posts… “Kitchen oceanography” brings the ocean to your house or class room! Oceanography is often taught in a highly theoretical way without much reference to […]

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: Double-diffusive mixing happens because heat and salt’s molecular diffusion are very different: Heat diffuses about a factor 100 faster than salt. This can lead to […]

Last week I got one of the coolest emails I have ever received: Someone had found my blog while googling for the salt content of seawater in order to use it to make bread, and he sent me a couple of pictures the resulting bread! Of course, I asked if I could share it as […]

My favorite experiment. Quick and easy and very impressive way to illustrate the influence of temperature on water densities. This experiment is great if you want to talk about temperature influencing density. Although it doesn’t actually show anything different from a temperature driven overturning experiment, where circulation is determined by hot water rising and cold […]

As you might have noticed, the last couple of days I have been super excited to play with the large tanks at GFI in Bergen. But then there are also simple kitchen oceanography experiments that need doing that you can bring into your class with you, like for example one showing that tides and internal waves […]

The experiment presented on this page is called the “slightly more complicated version” because it builds on the experiment “oceanic overturning circulation (the easiest version)” here. Background One of the first concepts people hear about in the context of ocean and climate is the “great conveyor belt”. The great conveyor belt is a very simplified concept of the […]

“The easiest” in the title of this page is to show the contrast to a “slightly more complicated” version here. Background One of the first concepts people hear about in the context of ocean and climate is the “great conveyor belt”. The great conveyor belt is a very simplified concept of the global ocean circulation, which is depicted as […]

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 can observe them for example in creeks, as shown below: If you can’t really spot them in the image above, check out this post for […]

Explore how melting of ice cubes floating in water is influenced by the salinity of the water. Important oceanographic concepts like density and density driven currents are visualized and can be discussed on the basis of this experiment. Context Audience This hands-on experiment is suited for many different audiences and can be used to achieve a wealth […]

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 you could make your own? Making a cloud inside a bottle will help us to understand how they are formed in the atmosphere. The experiment […]

My friends know me well. Especially A&I, which was proven again when they sent me the link to an article about two things that I am mildly obsessed with: Latte and double-diffusive mixing. My obsession with latte is a fairly recent thing, but I have been known to blog about interesting convection pattern in it […]

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 were excited to do some early Christmas baking for climate science! And playing with food colors is always fun… I think I had too much […]

What keeps you entertained at conference dinners is probably different for different people, but we quite enjoyed watching how the candles placed closer to the door to the balcony burned a lot faster (and a lot more messy) than those on other tables…

Even though most people think I am crazy, I always love watching the convection pattern develop in a hot drink.

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

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 of questions that keep you awake at night! Of course this can easily assessed experimentally. On a visit to the University of Bergen’s Centre for […]

The other day I was sitting in my conservatory with a friend when I had to take the photo below: Can you see how one bottle refracts light and the other one does not? What does this tell us about whether there is water in either of those bottles? I met most “normal” people wouldn’t even […]

Frost flowers on ice cream. You must have seen them before: They sometimes occur when you’ve had some ice cream, put the left-overs back in the freezer, and take them out again. And there you have it: Water-ice crystals all over your lovely ice cream! Completely annoying because, obviously, they only taste like water and mess […]

How well do people understand hydrostatics? I am preparing a workshop for tomorrow night and I am getting very bored by the questions that I have been using to introduce clickers for quite a lot of workshops now. So I decided to use the hydrostatic paradox this time around. The first question is the standard […]

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 see here: Astrid and I recently happened to notice how differently bubbles in champagne and in mineral water behaved. In the mineral water, bubbles formed […]

After reading recently that I am being considered the queen of the melting ice cube (aaaaw, thank you!!!), having my movies of the experiment featured in Elin Darelius and Petra Langebroek’s article on “fun in the kitchen”, and hearing that the activity I posted on the “On The Cutting Edge”‘s website using the very same experiment has been […]

Using the “melting ice cube” experiment to let future instructors experience inquiry-based learning. I recently (well, last year, but you know…) got the chance to fill in for a colleague and teach part of a workshop that prepares teaching staff for using inquiry-based learning in their own teaching. My part was to bring in an experiment […]

One of the most exciting things about work travel? Staying in tons of different hotels, which all have different opportunities to play with water. For example at a recent team event, there was this tap with a really efficient aerator, that made the hydraulic jump look even more exciting than usual: And then at a […]

I am updating many of my old posts on experiments and combining multiple posts on the same topic to come up with a state-of-the-art post, so you can always find the best materials on here. And today I would like to present you my favorite experiment: Salt fingering! Check out the new page I made for […]

In my last post, I showed you the legendary overturning experiment. And guess what occurred to me? That there is an even easier way to show the same thing. No gel pads! (BUT! And that is a BIG BUT! Melting of ice cubes in lukewarm water is NOT the process that drives the “real” overturning! For […]

For one of my side-projects I needed higher-resolution photos of the overturning experiment, so I had to redo it. Figured I’d share them with you, too. You know the experiment: gel pads for sports injuries, one hot (here on the left), one cold (here on the right). Blue dye on the cold pad to mark the […]

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 have two objects hanging on the beam balance, a heavy one with a large volume, and a lighter one with a smaller volume. As we […]

Conny, Siska, Martin and myself just — we came back home only yesterday! — ran a summer camp for teenagers called “Forscherfreizeit Ratzeburg”. The idea was to combine a fun summer holiday experience at a beautiful lake with all kinds of opportunities for doing experiments as well going sailing, swimming, hiking, you name it. And we […]

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 never know what you’ll see when you open the lid! Sometimes, you get long crystals like these: And then other times, you get something completely […]

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 visualizing stream lines that I wanted to show on my blog. So I set out to try it, but it just never worked exactly the […]

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 to the next level: She brought the mystery tube in to work and tested it on colleagues! And when we were discussing the mystery tube […]

Finally I know why I’ve been collecting empty toilet paper and kitchen paper rolls for ages: To build mystery tubes! I only built a prototype, but it works just fine. So here is what you do with it: And now it’s your turn. How does the mystery tube work? I can’t wait to use mystery […]

Different methods to project the sun to watch it safely. During our recent PBL workshop, we came up with a number of different ways to watch a solar eclipse by projecting the sun’s image on a screen, using “household items” (which was the task we had set). Many different methods are shown here: Below are […]

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 jar” post a while back, sometimes I just need to do some cool oceanography. So last Saturday, this is what I did: I took a […]

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 last weekend. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a rotating table at hand, but luckily most of my experiments work better than the exploding water balloon time-lapse […]

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 I had to try and recreate their experiments after I saw this when approaching Zurich airport recently: So let’s start with fog in a bottle. I’m […]

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 in at the very last minute and figured I could just share them here, too. Why not try a new style every once in a […]

Because surely there is one more post in this topic? ;-) For those of you who haven’t heard about the “melting ice cube” obsession of mine, please check out the links to other posts at the end of this post. For everybody else’s sake, let’s dive right in! When Kristin and I ran the workshop […]

I had to do the complete series of experiments, of course… The other day I mentioned that I had used salt from my kitchen for the “ice cubes melting in fresh and salt water” experiment, and that that salt was the super healthy one that was both iodized and containing folic acid. And what happened […]

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 should set a timer and a ruler next to the beakers for scale. The background and timer I did something about, but the ruler I […]

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 fresh water experiment? It is really difficult to see in the picture below (sorry!) but you can probably spot the ice cube floating at the […]

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 I haven’t written about in a long time, even though (or possibly: because) I wrote a whole series about it last year (see links at […]

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 fascinated. I’ve written about salt fingering before, and given tips on run the experiment, but today we tried a different setup. We used the same […]

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? ;-)

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 always talk about water seeking its level and hydrostatics and stuff – we know that that’s how it should be because of the capillary effects. […]

How to destroy surface tension. Remember how in this post my parents sent me a picture of the experiment that I didn’t get to work out? Later the same day they sent me the movie below, demonstrating first how to put stuff on the surface without it sinking, and then how to destroy the surface […]

Lots of stuff an be made to float on water just because of surface tension. This morning, I was taking pictures of heaps of waters on coins. I was planning to follow up on that post with pictures of a dome of water on a full mug. So far so good. Then, I was planning on putting […]

The classical way of demonstrating surface tension. When talking about surface tension, the classical thing to do is to talk about the shape of drops of water. As seen before in this post, the drops of water act as lenses. It is pretty amazing how much water you can pile on a single coin! If […]

More on what water can do to light. Remember my fascination with dandelions? Just to remind you: Especially in combination with coins and water droplets, dandelions are a source of nearly endless entertainment: See how much cooler 1 NOK coins become only by adding a little water? Here the same two coins in the sun […]

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 a clue, so here we go: Isn’t it amazing time and time again how water refracts light and makes things look distorted? This can be […]

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 at the end of this post, I promise!). But first, pretty pictures of pretty flowers. As a kid, I could never understand why nobody wanted […]

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 obviously had to make sure they worked. And can you guess how you best test that? Really. What else did you think we tested them […]

More playing with a vacuum pump. In this post, we talked about how decreasing the pressure on water can make dissolved gases come out of solution. But what happens if you suddenly increase the pressure again? This is the same movie as in the previous post, just to remind you of what we did: We […]

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 back from doing “real science” in Bergen the other day, they picked me up at the airport and showed me their latest toys: Vacuum pumps! […]

Ending hot-beverages-week in style. So now we know how to cool down your tea by blowing on it and how to cool it down quickly (or not) by adding milk. So what if you wanted your hot chocolate to stay warm for as long as possible? Yes! You should add marshmallows to prevent heat transfer both by […]

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 show other stuff, too. I know it has been done over and over again, but we have new students every year, don’t we, so someone […]

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 a good idea. Wouldn’t my breath be warmer than room temperature, and hence shouldn’t the soup get warmer instead of colder? Then I didn’t think […]

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 it would be cool to have household examples for most, if not all, of the topics I’ll be talking about. So this is one example […]

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! Yes, movies of rivers and rapids are always really impressive, too, but how cool is it to be able to observe hydraulic jumps in your […]

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. Since most of the experiments I’ve been showing on this blog were run in the context of Bachelor or Master oceanography-major courses, she didn’t think […]

Ha, this is a bad pun. We are modeling the Denmark Strait Overflow – but in a non-numerical, small-scale-and-playdough kind of way. More than a year ago, Kjetil and I ran that experiment with a group of high-school students and when writing a post about a much more sophisticated version of this experiment I realized I […]

Still more on hydrostatic pressure. Just because it is cool :-)

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 hydrostatic pressure” by Loverude, Heron and Kautz is a barometer problem. Students are asked to compare the pressure at point X and point Y. Apparently, […]

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 with hydrostatic pressure” by Loverude, Heron and Kautz at the Journal Club at work. So tonight I am trying out a couple of experiments that […]

Using orange peel as cartesian divers. Guess what my mom told me when we were playing with cartesian divers the other day? That orange peel works really well as a cartesian diver! Who would have thought? And just because we like playing we tried both orange peel and tangerine peel. Watch! Funnily enough, they behave […]

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 to visualize that air is a whole lot more compressible than water is to look at cartesian divers. You probably know the fancy ones as […]

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 I had found the perfect support team to film movies of people sinking into quicksand: Sadly, it turns out that while he does sink slowly, […]

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 to just quickly set something up in class (or in your own kitchen) you don’t necessarily want to go through the whole hassle of a […]

The “other” double-diffusive mixing process. After having talked extensively about double diffusive mixing in my courses, I tend to assume that students not only remember that there is such thing as double-diffusive mixing, but that they also remember our discussions on how the process works, and that they would be able to transfer this to processes […]

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, I think that the process is just really cool (watch the movie in this post and tell me that it isn’t!!!) and that the experiments […]

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: Double-diffusive mixing happens because heat and salt’s molecular diffusion are very different: Heat diffuses about a factor 100 faster than salt. This can lead to […]

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 – warm and salty water leaving the Mediterranean and sinking to a couple of kilometer’s depth in the Atlantic Ocean. Since I happened to be […]

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 much more aware of everyday things that can be used to illustrate concepts related to oceanography I have become since starting this blog! This is so […]

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 concept of progressive waves, I showed a drawing from one of the textbooks, where someone was moving a rope such that waves traveled on the […]

Simple experiment on why the impact of glaciers and sea ice on sea level, respectively, are not the same. It could be so simple: An ice cube sinks into water until the mass it replaces is equal to its own mass. Since the mass of said ice cube is not changing when it melts, under […]

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 data much more once they have first-hand experience with how difficult it is to design instruments and make sense of the readings. Over the last […]

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 and density). I find that they appreciate oceanographic data much more once they have first-hand experience with how difficult it is to design instruments and […]

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 find that they appreciate oceanographic data much more once they have first-hand experience with how difficult it is to design instruments and make sense of […]

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 I ran that activity, students were very quick to correctly connect the samples with the correct sampling locations without much discussion going on. This time […]

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 between the two fluids. The simplest way to demonstrate this in class can be seen below – two 0.5l plastic bottles are used, one half-filled […]

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 horizontal. This demo works really well with a piece of paper towel, too, especially if that is grabbed from a dispenser in the lecture theatre […]

More details on the structure of fresh water and salt water ice. Fresh water and salt water ice have very different structures as I already discussed in this post. In the image above you see that the structures are very different. Whereas fresh water ice is clear and transparent, salt water ice has a porous structure […]

What contexts can the “ice cubes melting in fresh water and in salt water” experiment be used in? As you might have noticed, I really like the “ice cubes melting in fresh water and in salt water” experiment. Initially, I had only three posts planned on the topic (post 1 and 2 showing different variation […]

Different didactical settings in which the “ice cubes melting in fresh and salt water” experiment can be used. In part 1 and 2 of this series, I showed two different ways of using the “ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water” experiment in lectures. Today I want to back up a little bit […]

Visualization of how much salt is actually contained in sea water. When preparing “sea water samples” for class, it is always astonishing to me how much salt I have to add for normal open-ocean salinities. Time and time again it looks like it should be way too much, but then when tasting it, it tastes […]

Sea ice and fresh water ice have distinctly different properties that can easily be investigated even in big class rooms. In “on how ice freezes from salt water” I talked a bit about how dye was rejected when I tried to produce colored ice cubes for another experiment. But even non-colored ice that were made […]

The “ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water” experiment the way I usually use it in class. — Edit — For an updated description of this experiment please go to this page! — Edit — You might remember the “ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water experiment” from a couple of […]

Experiment to visualize the effects of density differences on ocean circulation. This is the first post in a series on one of my favorite in-class experiments; I have so much to say about it that we’ll have to break it up into several posts. Post 1 (this post) will present one setup of the experiment, […]

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 place next month in Bergen. This year’s topic is ocean and water, and many interesting activities are being planned. Today Kjersti, Martin and I met […]

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 up. You hold it over a candle flame. What do you think will happen? Yes – it will burst pretty instantly. Now imagine you are […]

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 experiment ever: Cold water in one of the small bottles is dyed blue, hot water in the other small bottle is dyed red. Both are […]

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 only easy if you are in a country where you can get the right soda brand both in normal and in light version in cans. […]

Three in-class experiments run in parallel. Great if you want to discuss how properties are measured and what kind of difficulties you might encounter. Temperature, salinity and density are the most important properties in physical oceanography. Measuring them with a CTD is easy. But can you, using basic household items, build instruments to measure those properties? My […]

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 North Atlantic, the Baltic and Arctic sea ice. Just by tasting their different salinities (40psu, 35psu, 10psu and 5psu, respectively) students figured out which of […]