bottom Ekman layer – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Ekman layers in my kitchen

mglessmer — Thu, 21 May 2020 12:05:59 +0000

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 […]

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Demonstrating Ekman layers in a rotating tank: High pressure and low pressure systems!

mglessmer — Sun, 11 Aug 2019 19:05:30 +0000

Ekman spirals — current profiles that rotate their direction over depth, caused by friction and Coriolis force — are really neat to observe in a rotating tank. I just found out that they are apparently (according to Wikipedia) called “corkscrew currents” in German, and that’s what they look like, too. I tend to think of […]

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Bottom Ekman layer without a rotating table

mglessmer — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 07:00:44 +0000

Can you do a bottom Ekman layer demonstration without a rotating table? That’s the kind of challenge I like :-) The way I’ve previously showed bottom Ekman layers is by spinning up a cylindrical tank on the rotating table until it reaches solid body rotation, adding dye crystals to visualise the circulation later, and then […]

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