EDarelius&team Archives - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

Tides themselves don’t induce (a lot of) mixing, only tides hitting topography do. An experiment.

August 17, 2018

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…

Waves in a density stratification. One of the most beautiful tank experiments I’ve ever seen.

August 16, 2018

It’s pretty impressive when a mountain moves through a stratification and generates lee waves. But what I find even more impressive: The waves that travel behind the mountain when the…

Tank experiment: Lee waves in a fancy density (and dye) stratification

August 16, 2018

Did you seriously think we’d stop tank experiments with only 2-layer systems? Nooo! Today, the plan was to set up a continuous stratification, which I have been planning to do…

The one where it would help to understand the theory better (but still: awesome tank experiment!)

August 16, 2018

The main reason why we went to all the trouble of setting up a quasi-continuous stratification to pull our mountain through instead of sticking to the 2 layer system we…

Dead water — the fancy experiment including Nansen himself

August 16, 2018

Now that we do have a really awesome 12-layer 6-color stratification, we obviously had to do the dead water experiment again. This time we chose to include a not-too-happy-looking Nansen…

“Dead water” or: ship-generated internal waves

August 16, 2018

And here is another experiment that can be done with the same stratification as the lee waves: Towing a ship to explore the phenomenon of “dead water”! Dead water is…

Lee waves in the tank

August 15, 2018

Did you guess what we needed the stratification for? Yes — we are moving mountains again! :-) What we want to look at: How a current reacts to an obstacle…

Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities

August 15, 2018

I’m back at my happy place — the teaching lab at GFI in Bergen! :-) Here a quick look at what we’ve been doing today: Filling the large wave tank!…

We discovered a new galaxy! Or at least a very pretty vortex

October 26, 2017

When we move our wall back and forth, we create very strong wing tip vortices that persist for quite a long time. Above, you see the vortex, lit by a…

“No one believes a theory, except the theorist. Everyone believes an experiment — except the experimenter.”

October 24, 2017

Different types of experiments, and why we use such a weirdly-shaped “Antarctica” and are happy with it. When we want to show people images of our model experiments in a tank, people often imagine…

How to make sure the properties of water in a tank experiment are just right

October 23, 2017

For all our experiments here on the rotating platform in Grenoble, we have had a source, introducing an artificial current into our water-filled tank. With flow rates between 15 l/min…

Closing off our channel at the ice-shelf end to avoid unrealistic outflow

October 20, 2017

We are very deep into discussing all the different ice shelf experiments that have happened so far. As you see above, the white board in our office is filled with…

And now on to even more realistic ice shelves!

October 19, 2017

We have already described experiments where our ice shelf was tilted, making the setup a little more realistic* than before (link here). But then later that day, we did two…

What a day in the Coriolis lab looks like

October 18, 2017

You have seen plenty of images of our experiments over the last weeks (and if you have not, scroll back on the blog!). Time to show you what a day in…

What happens when a current meets an obstacle? Topographic steering

October 18, 2017

As long as water depth and latitude stay the same, a current usually happily goes straight forward. However, a large part of what we are doing at the Coriolis tank in…

Tilting the ice shelf! Or: Our experiments are getting more realistic

October 17, 2017

Until now, we have used an “ice shelf” (a plastic box) which had a horizontal bottom (Read more about the general setup of the experiment in Nadine’s post). The bottom of…

Investigating ocean currents in a rotating swimming pool

October 13, 2017

Reposting from Sci/Why “where Canadian children’s writers discuss science, words, and the eternal question – why?” — Have you ever wondered what happens when you put a 13-m-diameter swimming pool on…

Looking at our current’s structure over depth

October 13, 2017

For our scientific analyses, we look at the flow field at several discrete levels throughout the water depth. But we can — just for fun! — look at them almost…

What happens when you accidentally change the rotation rate of the tank just a liiiittle bit? Inertial oscillations!

October 11, 2017

At some point the angular velocity of our tank was accidentally changed a tiny little bit. That was almost instantly corrected, however we could see the effect for quite some…

Elin receives award for polar sciences!

October 11, 2017

I’m sure there will be an official press release some time later today, and we will link to it when it comes out, but I thought I should let you all…

Don’t you just love eddies? Happy Monday!

October 9, 2017

I could watch flow fields for the rest of my life and not get bored :-)

See the Coriolis deflection when filling the tank!

October 6, 2017

I just realized we never showed you that you can see the Coriolis deflection on the inflowing water when we started filling the tank! So here you go. Isn’t that cool?…

Always beautiful: Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities!

October 5, 2017

Don’t you just love watching this kind of stuff? :-)

Fairy dust sprinkler, or: more neutrally buoyant particles!

October 4, 2017

What happens when the almost neutrally buoyant particles that we use to visualize the flow field have sunken out of the surface layer? The fairy-dust sprinkler comes and sprinkles more fairy dust!…

How we can see vertical slices of the flow field in our tank

October 3, 2017

We’ve talked before how we use the laser to light up neutrally-buoyant particles on horizontal slices of our tank, but we can actually also do this in the vertical. This is…

We are constantly adding water to the tank — how is the water level kept stable?

October 2, 2017

You’ve probably been wondering about this, too: We have a constant inflow from our “source” into the tank. How do we keep the water level stable? Worry no more —…

This is what experiments look like at our rotating tank

September 29, 2017

Just so you don’t get bored over the weekend (and because they are so so beautiful to look at!) here are a couple more sneak peek gifs of our experiments.…

About the influence of viscosity: The Reynolds number

September 29, 2017

This blog post was written for Elin Darelius & team’s blog (link). Check it out if you aren’t already following it! — I read a blog post by Clemens Spensberger…

Who is faster, the currents or the waves? The Froude number

September 28, 2017

A very convenient way to describe a flow system is by looking at its Froude number. The Froude number gives the ratio between the speed a fluid is moving at,…

The ocean is very deep. It’s also very shallow. On the L/H aspect ratio and the size of the tank.

September 27, 2017

When we come back from research cruises, one of the things that surprises people back home is how much time it takes to take measurements. And that’s for two reasons: Because…

Why we actually need a large tank — similarity requirements of a hydrodynamic model

September 26, 2017

When talking about oceanographic tank experiments that are designed to show features of the real ocean, many people hope for tiny model oceans in a tank, analogous to the landscapes…

Of swirls, eddies and fairy dust

September 25, 2017

Similarly to last Friday’s Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, observing swirls and eddies made from green fairy dust is not really what we are in Grenoble for. But are they pretty! And it is actually…

Why are we rotating a huge tent with our tank?

September 25, 2017

When watching the images or movies that show the rotating tank from the outside, you may have been wondering about why the whole structure — tank, office above the tank,…

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

September 22, 2017

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…

About neutrally buoyant particles, popcorn, and more bubbles

September 20, 2017

When you see all our pretty images of currents and swirling eddies and everything, what you actually see are the neutrally buoyant particles that get lit by the laser in…

Exploring the source of Antarctic currents…

September 18, 2017

Sometimes a polar oceanographer needs to be in Antarctica to observe things first hand and up close :-)

No, the edge of our tank is not “the equator”

September 17, 2017

A very common idea of what goes on in our tank is that we have a tiny Antarctica in the center and that the edge of our tank then represents the…

First full week of experiments ended successfully! :-)

September 15, 2017

As you see, we have increased the rotation rate of the tank! From 1 rotation in 50 seconds to now 1 rotation in 30 seconds. Which means that at the…

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

September 15, 2017

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…

How our experiments relate to the real Antarctica

September 14, 2017

After seeing so many nice pictures of our topography and the glowing bright green current field around it in the tank, let’s go back to the basics today and talk…

Water jet pumps, and why we don’t like them in our experiments

September 13, 2017

Just a quick update from the lab tonight: We are fixing more bugs by the hour :-) First: the bubble-free source. I have previously written about how we thought we…

What are we actually trying to measure in our rotating swimming pool?

September 13, 2017

You’ve heard us talk a lot about rotating swimming pools. Nadine has written about why we care about Antarctic ice shelf melting (link), why the ice shelf is melting (link)…

Getting rid of bubbles in our jet

September 12, 2017

Sometimes the devil is in the details… On our first day at the Coriolis platform in Grenoble, I took a picture of the “source” in our experiments (see above): The plastic…

We have water in our rotating tank! Now testing the lasers

September 11, 2017

Above you see the very first water coming into our tank. Only a couple of hours, and the tank was full! And in solid body rotation (since it has been spinning all the…

Why do we go to all the hassle of rotating our swimming pool?

September 11, 2017

This blog post was written for Elin Darelius & team’s blog (link) which you should totally follow if you aren’t already! — We have started rotating and filling water into…

Foam pattern when hard-boiling eggs

September 9, 2017

Today we have foam patterns again, but of a very different kind than usually: I don’t know if I have just never noticed before (I can’t really imagine I would…

Calibrations and decisions

September 8, 2017

This blog post was written for Elin Darelius & team’s blog (link). Go check out that blog, more cool stuff being added there every day! :-) — Remember this little…

Rotating a whole swimming pool

September 7, 2017

This blog post was written for Elin Darelius & team’s blog (link) and is just reposted here to keep my archives complete. If you aren’t already following Elin’s blog, you…

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