diffusion – Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Molecular diffusion at different temperatures (involving tea bags and some convection)

mglessmer — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 08:18:55 +0000

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 […]

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Layered latte: A great real-life example of double-diffusive mixing!

mglessmer — Sat, 25 Aug 2018 16:37:06 +0000

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 […]

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“Laboratory layered latte” – combining latte and double diffusion. Easily my favourite paper ever!

mglessmer — Sat, 16 Dec 2017 04:56:48 +0000

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 […]

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Salt fingering

mglessmer — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 15:56:46 +0000

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 […]

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Molecular diffusion of heat and salt

mglessmer — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 04:44:11 +0000

Why heat and salt diffuse at different rates. Why do heat and salt diffuse at different rates? This seems to always be puzzling students when talking about double diffusion. Well, why should they diffuse at the same rate? The processes of molecular diffusion of heat and salt are very different. In the case of heat, […]

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Salt fingering – DIY

mglessmer — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 05:57:52 +0000

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 […]

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Diffusive layering. Or: This is not a trick question!

mglessmer — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 05:55:18 +0000

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 […]

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Salt fingering

mglessmer — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 05:23:22 +0000

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 […]

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Double-diffusive mixing

mglessmer — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:50:24 +0000

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 […]

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