Wednesday, March 28, 2007

I just ran across this at Boing Boing:

Geometric whirlpools revealed

Bizarre geometric shapes that appear at the centre of swirling vortices in planetary atmospheres might be explained by a simple experiment with a bucket of water.


Hmmm . . .
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3 comments:

Jon said...

Any bets on how long it takes for Hoagland to start mumbling about his beloved "hyperdimensional physics?" ;)

12:39 AM
Mac said...

Otis--

Oh, it's inevitable. And maybe even warranted, although I don't think it's the best bet.

There really is such a thing as "hyperdimensional physics" -- just ask Michio Kaku -- but Hoagland's self-proclaimed expertise in the matter is generally pretty laughable.

Even so, I'm looking forward to reading his take. :-)

11:53 PM
Carol Maltby said...

I'm trying to find the picture I took last year at the Liberty Science Center, where they have a disk you can spin that has fluids sandwiched between two plexiglass circles. I thought I had the name of the device bookmarked somewhere, but that's gone AWOL too. [sigh]

Anyway, I was able to get hexagons to form in the center, by spinning fast and then turning it in the other direction. These spinning globes don't do that, of course, so there's something different going on from what I did in a plane.

10:20 AM

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