currents – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

New SERC “Teach the Earth” Activity on “Ocean Currents and Overflows”

mglessmer — Thu, 23 May 2024 18:09:21 +0000

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 […]

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Rheoscopic fluid

mglessmer — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 17:05:05 +0000

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.

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Totally not the focus of our experiments, but so beautiful! Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities

mglessmer — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 10:56:48 +0000

This is really not the focus of our experiments here in Grenoble, but they are too nice not to show: Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities! They showed up really nicely in our first experiment, when we only had neutrally-buoyant particles in our source water (and not yet in the ambient water). The water that shows up as the […]

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How the strength of the current influences which path it takes. First observations!

mglessmer — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 11:45:40 +0000

Depending on how strong a current we introduce in the 13-m-diameter rotating tank to simulate the strength of the coastal current in Elin et al.’s 2016 article (link on our blog, link to the article), it takes different pathway along and across our topography. According to theory, we expected to see something like what I […]

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Temperature-driven overturning experiment – the easy way

mglessmer — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 09:11:17 +0000

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 […]

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A very simple overturning experiment for outreach and teaching

mglessmer — Wed, 04 Nov 2015 09:32:18 +0000

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 […]

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Currents caused by thrusters

mglessmer — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 11:46:52 +0000

Or: fast inflow into nearly stagnant water body Did you ever notice how when certain ferries dock, they stop, already parallel to the dock, a couple of meters away from the dock and then just move sideways towards the dock? Usually they don’t even move passenger ferries any more, just use thrusters to keep them steady […]

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Currents on soap bubbles

mglessmer — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 16:51:44 +0000

There are currents and eddies and whirls everywhere! Today, Rolf showed us currents on soap bubbles. Check out the movie below for moving pictures!

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Marsigli’s experiment

mglessmer — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 04:53:55 +0000

Density-driven flow. The experiment presented in this post was first proposed by Marsigli in 1681. It illustrates how, despite the absence of a difference in the surface height of two fluids, currents can be driven by the density difference between the fluids. A really nice article by Soffientino and Pilson (2005) on the importance of the Bosporus […]

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