kitchen oceanography Archives - Adventures in Oceanography and Teaching

#KitchenOceanography

January 1, 2025

/ˈkɪtʃɪn ˌəʊʃəˈnɒɡrəfi/ noun Experimenting with ocean physics using only household items Observing oceanographic processes in, or during the preparation of, food and drinks DIYnamics: Rotating tank experiments based on LEGO…

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

May 23, 2024

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…

Using coffee in a talk on kitchen oceanography

October 21, 2021

I have been a bit quiet on here recently, because I had so many exciting projects going on that I did not manage to document them in real time (well,…

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

August 30, 2021

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,…

Coffee in #KitchenOceanography

February 16, 2021

For some reason my workflow regarding all things #KitchenOceanography and #WaveWatching changed at the beginning of this year. I started editing frames on the pictures I’m posting on Instagram, and,…

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Melting ice cubes that are forced to the bottom of a beaker

December 23, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Sea level rise

December 22, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Ice cores

December 21, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Resublimation

December 20, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Crystal structure of ice

December 19, 2020

My iEarth “Christmas Lecture” on #KitchenOceanography

December 19, 2020

I gave a talk withing iEarth’s seminar series to introduce myself to the network last week. And since it was the last lecture before the Christmas break, I tried to turn it…

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Fresh water and salt water ice crystal structure

December 18, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Diffusive layering

December 17, 2020

Diffusive layering — a super easy experiment!

December 17, 2020

Day 17 of my 24 days of #KitchenOceanography is about double-diffusive layering, and the post is using “go have a nice latte” as instructions. However, in times of Covid-19 (and…

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Double-diffusive mixing with cream and tea

December 16, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Double-diffusive mixing

December 15, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Topographic mixing

December 14, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Wind-driven mixing

December 13, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Transport of substances

December 12, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Eddy in a jar

December 11, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Mediterranean Outflow

December 10, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Vortex street

December 9, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Visualizing streamlines

December 8, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Hydraulic jump in the sink

December 7, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Surface waves and internal waves

December 6, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Overflow experiment

December 5, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Melting ice cubes!

December 4, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Density-driven currents

December 3, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Oceanic overturning circulation

December 2, 2020

24 Days of #KitchenOceanography — Layers in the ocean

December 1, 2020

Destroying the diffusive layers in a latte in order to observe the insulating properties of milk foam

November 19, 2019

Have you ever noticed how, if you stir your latte*, when you pull out the spoon it’s piping hot, yet there is no steam rising from the latte itself? That’s…

Ostfriesentee — Double diffusion in a tea cup

April 26, 2019

Showing double-diffusive mixing in tank experiments is a pain if you try to do it the proper way with carefully measured temperatures and salinities. It is, however, super simple, if…

My first attempt at building a rotating table for kitchen oceanography using LEGO

January 27, 2019

Inspired by the article “Affordable Rotating Fluid Demonstrations for Geoscience Education: the DIYnamics Project” by the Hill et al. (2018), I spent a fun Sunday afternoon with my friends Joke and…

#KitchenOceanography with Judith and her hot chocolate

January 25, 2019

Let’s talk about zonal jets! They keep popping into my life all the time right now, and that has got to mean something, right? Zonal jets, for all that are…

Update on freezing ice cubes and the temperature distribution in our freezer

October 10, 2018

After writing the blog post on sea ice formation, brine release and what ice cubes can tell you about your freezer earlier today, I prepared some more ice cubes (because you…

Sea ice formation, brine release, or: What ice cubes can tell you about your freezer

October 10, 2018

Many of my kitchen oceanography experiments use dyed ice cubes, usually because it makes it easier to track the melt water (for example when looking at how quickly ice cubes…

Stuff you can (and should!) observe in your kitchen: circulation in the water when boiling eggs

August 31, 2018

Now that I have introduced the new tag “kitchen oceanography: food related” to my blog, it’s time to add a couple new posts to that category. And today I have…

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

August 25, 2018

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…

Experiment: Double-diffusive mixing (salt fingering)

August 24, 2018

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:…

Guest post: Using seawater to make bread!

August 22, 2018

Last week I got one of the coolest emails I have ever received: Someone had found my blog while googling for the salt content of seawater in order to use…

Experiment: Temperature-driven circulation

August 20, 2018

My favorite experiment. Quick and easy and very impressive way to illustrate the influence of temperature on water densities. This experiment is great if you want to talk about temperature…

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…

Experiment: Oceanic overturning circulation (the slightly more complicated version)

August 15, 2018

The experiment presented on this page is called the “slightly more complicated version” because it builds on the experiment “oceanic overturning circulation (the easiest version)” here. Background One of the…

Experiment: Oceanic overturning circulation (the easiest version)

August 10, 2018

“The easiest” in the title of this page is to show the contrast to a “slightly more complicated” version here. Background One of the first concepts people hear about in the context…

Experiment: Eddy in a jar

August 6, 2018

Rotating experiments in your kitchen. Eddies, those large, rotating structures in the ocean, are pretty hard to imagine. Of course, you can see them on many different scales, so you…

Experiment: Ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water

July 23, 2018

Explore how melting of ice cubes floating in water is influenced by the salinity of the water. Important oceanographic concepts like density and density driven currents are visualized and can…

Cloud in a bottle experiment

March 4, 2018

Guest post by Susann Tegtmeier (written two months ago, I just never got around to posting it. Sorry!) — No one likes clouds when they bring rain, but what if…

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

December 16, 2017

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…

Of cupcakes and ice cores

December 2, 2017

For a popular science presentation on climate change, I needed a simple illustration for how ice cores can be used as archives of past climates. Luckily, my sister and family…

Candles in the wind. Or: The things that keep a nerd entertained during speeches at a conference dinner.

September 21, 2017

What keeps you entertained at conference dinners is probably different for different people, but we quite enjoyed watching how the candles placed closer to the door to the balcony burned…

Café Latte

August 10, 2017

Even though most people think I am crazy, I always love watching the convection pattern develop in a hot drink.

Pythagoras’ Cup

February 28, 2017

Yep, I’ve been playing this weekend :-) After seeing this on Facebook a while back I just couldn’t resist… Enjoy! :-)

Evaporating sea water

January 3, 2017

How much salt is there in sea water? What concentration do you need before crystals start forming? What will those crystals look like? I am sure those are the kind…

One glance — do you know which of the bottles is empty?

June 28, 2016

The other day I was sitting in my conservatory with a friend when I had to take the photo below: Can you see how one bottle refracts light and the other…

Frost flowers on ice cream: When you start thinking about phenomena and something really annoying, all of a sudden, becomes really cool.

June 23, 2016

Frost flowers on ice cream. You must have seen them before: They sometimes occur when you’ve had some ice cream, put the left-overs back in the freezer, and take them out…

Taking the hydrostatic paradox to the next (water) level

April 14, 2016

How well do people understand hydrostatics? I am preparing a workshop for tomorrow night and I am getting very bored by the questions that I have been using to introduce…

A string of bubbles

April 12, 2016

Have you ever noticed champagne bubbles that form as a string right in the middle of the glass and hardly anywhere else? This leads to the very cool pattern you…

Considered exemplary: My “ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water” in the “on the cutting edge” teaching collection! :-)

April 7, 2016

After reading recently that I am being considered the queen of the melting ice cube (aaaaw, thank you!!!), having my movies of the experiment featured in Elin Darelius and Petra Langebroek’s article…

Ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water. By Mirjam S. Glessmer

Using the “melting ice cube” experiment to let future instructors experience inquiry-based learning.

April 5, 2016

Using the “melting ice cube” experiment to let future instructors experience inquiry-based learning. I recently (well, last year, but you know…) got the chance to fill in for a colleague…

One of the most exciting things about work travel?

March 15, 2016

One of the most exciting things about work travel? Staying in tons of different hotels, which all have different opportunities to play with water. For example at a recent team…

My favorite demonstration of the coolest mixing process: Salt fingering!

December 15, 2015

I am updating many of my old posts on experiments and combining multiple posts on the same topic to come up with a state-of-the-art post, so you can always find the…

Temperature-driven overturning experiment – the easy way

November 6, 2015

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…

Overturning experiment. By Mirjam S. Glessmer

A very simple overturning experiment for outreach and teaching

November 4, 2015

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…

On buoyancy

September 2, 2015

This is an experiment that Martin brought to Ratzeburg and that he let me use on my blog: Using a beam balance to talk about buoyancy. So at first we…

Strawberry ice cream crystals

August 12, 2015

My new favorite thing is to put strawberries through a blender and then freeze small portions of that to eat as ice cream later. It is super yummy plus you…

Stream lines and paper towels

July 15, 2015

We’ve been talking about stream lines a lot recently (see for example the flow around a paddle or flow around other stuff). I’ve always heard stories about a neat way of…

More mystery tubes

June 26, 2015

My mystery tube blog post seems to have inspired a lot of people. How awesome! This is what my parents sent me: And my friend Kristin Richter took the whole thing…

Developing a hypothesis: Mystery tubes

May 1, 2015

Finally I know why I’ve been collecting empty toilet paper and kitchen paper rolls for ages: To build mystery tubes! I only built a prototype, but it works just fine.…

Watching the solar eclipse using “household items”

March 25, 2015

Different methods to project the sun to watch it safely. During our recent PBL workshop, we came up with a number of different ways to watch a solar eclipse by…

Vortex streets on a plate

February 23, 2015

You might think that three hours of canoe polo on a Saturday morning would be enough water for the day, but no. As when I did the experiment for the “eddies in a…

Eddies in a jar

January 28, 2015

Rotating experiments in your kitchen. Do you know those Saturday mornings when you wake up and just know that you have to do oceanography experiments? I had one of those…

Fog and clouds in a bottle

November 21, 2014

A little bit of hands-on meteorology for a change. This post is inspired by www.planet-science.com‘s “fog in a bottle” and “make a cloud in a bottle” posts. Inspired meaning that…

Tides in a glass

October 31, 2014

A very simple experiment to show how waves can travel around an ocean basin. I wrote these instructions for a book project that I was lucky enough to get involved…

Ice cubes melting at the bottom of the beakers

October 13, 2014

Because surely there is one more post in this topic? ;-) For those of you who haven’t heard about the “melting ice cube” obsession of mine, please check out the…

Why folic acid might be good for people, but not so good for tank experiments

October 6, 2014

I had to do the complete series of experiments, of course… The other day I mentioned that I had used salt from my kitchen for the “ice cubes melting in…

Melting ice cubes, again

October 3, 2014

Somehow I am stuck on this demonstration! I can’t let go of this experiment. Last time I posted about it, someone (Hallo Papa!) complained about the background and how I…

The icy elevator

September 29, 2014

Weird things happening when ice cubes melt. Remember I said that there were weird and wonderful things going on when I last ran the melting ice cubes in salt and…

Melting ice cubes reloaded

September 26, 2014

Or why you should pay attention to the kind of salt you use for your experiments. The melting ice cubes in salt and fresh water is one of my favorites that…

Salt fingering

August 28, 2014

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…

Surface tension with a twist

August 11, 2014

The coolest surface tension demonstration yet! Just because it is AWESOME. Enjoy! Watch the video here. oh, you didn’t think I would only post one video, did you? ;-)

Capillary effects

July 4, 2014

When hydrostatics just doesn’t explain things. Occasionally one notices water levels in straws that are slightly above the water levels in the glass. And of course – even though we…

Surface tension and washing-up liquid

May 23, 2014

How to destroy surface tension. Remember how in this post my parents sent me a picture of the experiment that I didn’t get to work out? Later the same day…

Surface tension and office supplies.

May 21, 2014

Lots of stuff an be made to float on water just because of surface tension. This morning, I was taking pictures of heaps of waters on coins. I was planning to…

Surface tension – heaps of water.

May 19, 2014

The classical way of demonstrating surface tension. When talking about surface tension, the classical thing to do is to talk about the shape of drops of water. As seen before…

Refraction of light in water – coins and lenses.

May 9, 2014

More on what water can do to light. Remember my fascination with dandelions? Just to remind you: Especially in combination with coins and water droplets, dandelions are a source of…

Refraction of light in water.

May 7, 2014

What water can do to light. In the last post, I showed you a couple of pictures of a vase filled with dandelions. Turns out this might not have been enough of…

Dandelions

May 5, 2014

kitchen oceanography

Making dandelion stem spirals. It’s sunny, dandelions are everywhere and not every post on this blog has to be about oceanography in the strictest sense (although you’ll see the connection…

Vacuum pumps

April 20, 2014

What else did you think we tested them on? Before using my parents’ vacuum pumps (“vacuum” being used in a loose sense of the word…) on water in this post, we…

Bubble size depending on pressure

April 16, 2014

More playing with a vacuum pump. In this post, we talked about how decreasing the pressure on water can make dissolved gases come out of solution. But what happens if…

Gases dissolved in water

April 14, 2014

A simple experiment to show that there are really gases dissolved in water. Luckily, my parents like to play at least as much as I do. So when I got…

The insulating properties of marshmallows

March 28, 2014

Ending hot-beverages-week in style. So now we know how to cool down your tea by blowing on it and how to cool it down quickly (or not) by adding milk. So what…

Tea and milk

March 26, 2014

More physics applications connected to tea. After the frustrations of taking pictures of steam in my last post, I decided that I could use the very same cute mug to…

Blowing on hot tea

March 24, 2014

Why would it be interesting to talk about this in a science class? As a kid I used to wonder why blowing on a hot soup or beverage should be…

Advection fog

March 21, 2014

When warm, moist air is advected and brought in contact with colder surfaces. Recently I’ve been starting to think about a course I’ll be teaching later this year, and how…

Hydraulic jump II

March 17, 2014

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!…

An overturning experiment

March 3, 2014

A simple experiment that shows how the large-scale thermally-driven ocean circulation works. Someone recently asked me whether I had ideas for experiments for her course in ocean sciences for non-majors.…

Modeling the Denmark Strait Overflow

February 24, 2014

Ha, this is a bad pun. We are modeling the Denmark Strait Overflow – but in a non-numerical, small-scale-and-playdough kind of way. More than a year ago, Kjetil and I ran…

Non-leaking bottle.

February 7, 2014

Still more on hydrostatic pressure. Just because it is cool :-)

Barometer problem.

January 31, 2014

Still talking about hydrostatic pressure. Yes, I am not done with hydrostatic pressure yet! One of the problems students were given in the study “Identifying and addressing student difficulties with…

Hydrostatic pressure

January 29, 2014

What are students not understanding about hydrostatic pressure? Tomorrow (today by the time this post will go online, I guess) I will present the paper “Identifying and addressing student difficulties…

Cartesian diver – organic version

January 22, 2014

Using orange peel as cartesian divers. Guess what my mom told me when we were playing with cartesian divers the other day? That orange peel works really well as a…

Cartesian diver

January 20, 2014

Compressibility of water and air. Today I want to talk about the different compressibilities of water and air. Actually, no, I just want to show you an experiment. One way…

Non-newtonian fluids.

January 17, 2014

kitchen oceanography

Playing with cornstarch and water. The other day my mom and I played with cornstarch and water. I have always been wanting to experiment more with non-newtonian fluids, and then…

Salt fingering – DIY

January 13, 2014

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…

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

January 10, 2014

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…

Salt fingering

January 8, 2014

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,…

Double-diffusive mixing

January 6, 2014

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:…

Mediterranean outflow

December 2, 2013

Students demonstrating the mediterranean outflow in a tank. As reported earlier, students had to conduct experiments and present their results as part of CMM31. Niklas chose to demonstrate the mediterranean outflow…

The broken spoon

November 6, 2013

Refraction of light in water. I just happened to notice this the other day, so I thought I’d take a picture and share it with you. It is amazing how…

Progressive waves on a rope

October 5, 2013

Visualization of progressive waves: wave form and energy move forward while the rope itself stays in place. When I talked about waves in GEOF130 recently, in order to explain the…

Why melting sea ice does not contribute to sea level rise.

September 29, 2013

Simple experiment on why the impact of glaciers and sea ice on sea level, respectively, are not the same. It could be so simple: An ice cube sinks into water…

Measuring temperature.

September 28, 2013

Students build thermometers. As described in this post, I like to have students build “instruments” to measure the most oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity and density). I find that they appreciate oceanographic…

Measuring salinity

September 27, 2013

Students evaporate water to measure the salinity of a water sample. As described in this post, I like to have students build “instruments” to measure the most oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity…

Measuring density

September 26, 2013

Students build a device to measure density. As described in this post, I like to have students build “instruments” to measure the most oceanographic properties (temperature, salinity and density). I…

Tasting sea water reloaded

September 25, 2013

Doing the “tasting sea water” activity again with a different group of students. A very good introduction to the concept of salinity is the “tasting sea water” activity. Last time…

Internal waves in a bottle

September 18, 2013

Internal waves are shown in simple 0.5l bottles. Waves travel on the interface between fluids of different densities and the phase speed of those waves depends on the density difference…

How mountains form

September 17, 2013

A very simple visualization of rock folding. See? When I said “very simple” I meant “very simple”. But it does help explain why sometimes rock layers are not nice and…

On the structure of fresh water and salt water ice

September 11, 2013

More details on the structure of fresh water and salt water ice. Fresh water and salt water ice have very different structures as I already discussed in this post. In the…

Melting ice cubes – what contexts to use this experiment in (post 4/4)

September 9, 2013

What contexts can the “ice cubes melting in fresh water and in salt water” experiment be used in? As you might have noticed, I really like the “ice cubes melting…

Melting ice cubes – one experiment, many ways (post 3/4)

September 7, 2013

Different didactical settings in which the “ice cubes melting in fresh and salt water” experiment can be used. In part 1 and 2 of this series, I showed two different…

How much salt is there in sea water?

September 6, 2013

Visualization of how much salt is actually contained in sea water. When preparing “sea water samples” for class, it is always astonishing to me how much salt I have to…

Properties of sea ice and fresh water ice

September 5, 2013

Sea ice and fresh water ice have distinctly different properties that can easily be investigated even in big class rooms. In “on how ice freezes from salt water” I talked…

Ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water (post 2/4)

September 4, 2013

The “ice cubes melting in fresh water and salt water” experiment the way I usually use it in class. — Edit — For an updated description of this experiment please…

Ice cubes melting in salt water and freshwater (post 1/4)

September 1, 2013

Experiment to visualize the effects of density differences on ocean circulation. This is the first post in a series on one of my favorite in-class experiments; I have so much…

Forskningsdagene are almost upon us

August 30, 2013

Preparations for experiments to be shown at the science fair “forskningsdagene” are under preparation. Forskningsdagene, a cooperation between research institutes and schools, science centers and other educational places, will take…

Heat capacity of air and water

August 28, 2013

Hands-on activity to better understand the concept and consequences of heat capacity. Also a great party trick. Imagine you take a balloon. Any kind of normal balloon. You blow it…

And even more on density

August 28, 2013

My favorite experiment. Quick and easy and very impressive way to illustrate the influence of temperature on water densities. Today in the “introduction to oceanography” (GEOF130) we conducted my favorite…

More on density

August 28, 2013

Extremely simple experiment to illustrate the effect of density differences. At room temperature, will coke cans float or sink in freshwater? And how about coke light? Btw, this experiment is…

How to measure temperature, salinity and density

August 28, 2013

Three in-class experiments run in parallel. Great if you want to discuss how properties are measured and what kind of difficulties you might encounter. Temperature, salinity and density are the…

Tasting sea water

August 28, 2013

Hands-on activity on sea water salinity In the first lecture of the “introduction to oceanography” GEOF130 course 2013, we investigated water samples from four different regions: The Mediterranean, the tropical…

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