Tag Archives: hydrodynamics

Hydraulic jump II

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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 own sink? Let me remind you:

Hydraulic jump in my kitchen sink. Video here

So this is what happens when the water jet hits the (more or less) level bottom of the sink. But what would happen if it instead hit a slope?

Now, if I wasn’t working a full-time job, or if that job wasn’t completely unrelated to anything to do with hydraulic jumps, I would now proudly present movies of all kinds of hydraulic jumps on sloped surfaces. As it is, I can tell you that I have tons of ideas of where to go to make really nice movies, but for now this is all I can offer:

Yes, that is a chopping board in a sink. It shows really nicely how the hydraulic jump occurs closer to the point of impact of the jet as you go uphill (because the water slows down faster going in that direction than going downhill) and again how the radius depends on the flow speed of the jet. Stay tuned for a more elaborate post on this!

Hydraulic jumps

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Water changing its velocity from above to below the critical velocity.

Recently in beautiful Wetzlar: The river Lahn flows through the city below the medieval cathedral at sunset. And I’m showing you this because we can observe a hydraulic jump!

A hydraulic jump occurs when water that was flowing faster than the critical speed suddenly slows down to below the critical speed. Some of its kinetic energy is converted to potential energy (see the higher surface levels of the turbulent part of the fluid {except in this example the water is flowing down a steep slope, so the higher levels are a bit tricky to observe}) and a lot of energy is lost to turbulence. A very nice example can be seen here:

As the water moves away from where the jet hits the sink, it slows down. Can you spot the hydraulic jump? Isn’t it cool to watch how it is pushed away if the flow rate is higher, and how it comes back again when the tap is slowly closed?

P.S.: Yes, I’m being very vague about what that critical speed might be. Stay tuned for a post on that, I’m working on it! Just had to share the Lahn movie :-)