Classroom Demos

These classroom demonstrations were designed by Prof. John Hart at the 葫芦娃视频. Construction of the experiments and filming of the clips on this website was carried out by Scott Kittelman and John Hart. Some of the equipment used in the demonstrations was obtained from previously-completed externally-funded research projects within the GFD Lab. We are grateful to the National Science Foundation, Physical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography Programs, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Microgravity Sciences Program, for support of this effort.

1. Paul Bunyan鈥檚 Bicycle Pump.
2. Van de Graf generator shows inductive charging, breakdown, how a lightning rod works鈥.
3. 1/r^2聽 Simple beam area demonstration.
4. 聽 Orientation of falling ice crystals.聽聽 Drop tube shows how hexagons and needles fall.
5. The rotating annulus experiment (Hadley motion, baroclinic instabilty, vacillations, etc.)
6. neutral: hand-around demonstration of neutrally buoyancy particles.
7. Lava lamp illustrates differential thermal expansion.
8. Periodically forced pendulum shows periodic, multiply periodic, chaotic states.
9. Orbits of ODE鈥檚. Laser projector driven by ODE solver shows trajectories from various nonlinear ODE鈥檚 . (A wall-sized oscilloscope.)
10. demonstrates need for nuclei, fog formation and dissipation.
11. Air hockey on a rotating planet
12. Particle motion on a rotating platform. Also shows inertial circles.
13.
14. Vapor pressure, evaporation, volatility.
15. Horizontal convergence under a cyclone, divergence out under an anticyclone.
16. Spin up and spin down in various containers (timescales, symmetry breaking鈥.).
17. Handboiler illustrates various properties of gases and liquids (expansion, boiling, volatility..)
18. Simple two-fluid cell illustrates gravity currents. Compare speed to theory.
19. Convection from a horizontally localized heat source.
20. Convection, radiation, conduction. Use with thermocouple or IR camera.
21. Hero鈥檚 fountain shows a paradox explained by simple hydrostatics.
22. 聽聽 Use drop tube to illustrate flat-fall of model plates.
23. Particle motion on a rotating parabola shows inertial circle oscillations.
24. Illustrate Kelvin-Helmoltz instability.
25. Illustrate Rayleigh-Taylor instability.
26. The rotating annulus experiment. (Hadley motion, baroclinic instabilty, vacillations, etc.)
27. Instability and transition in Taylor-Couette flow.
28. Tilt tank shows instability, wave breaking, etc..
29. Internal Gravity Waves: Illustrate phase and group velocity. Resonance.
30. Measuring IR from and through various materials.
31. 3 micron video camera sees what class is drinking (hot, cold, etc.), illustrates IR emissivity of water vapor.
32. Monitor T(t) during boiling. Estimate energy required to boil off a certain mass of water.
33. Exothermic re-heaters demonstrate latent heat release, nucleation, supercooled liquids.
34. Ninja balls show dramatic consequences of multiple elastic collisions.
35. Water channel illustrates flow over mountain, shocks and bores, lee waves.
36. Demonstrate western intensification 鈥 independent of sign of forcing (cyclonic or anticyclonic).
37. Collapsing cans, and the Mt. Evans Barrel.
38. 2-Color laserlight ray tracing 鈥 Color separation and beam focusing.
39. The Green Flash 鈥 Green edge of sun, red edge of sun.
40. Demonstrate Hadley motion, baroclinic instability, vacillation, etc.
41. Taylor Proudman effect: Flow around topography in a rapidly rotating fluid.
42. P(saturated air) and P(dry air) vs. T.
43. Reddening by small particle scattering.
44. Sea Breeze: Convection from a horizontally localized heat source.
45. Water channel illustrates flow over mountain, shocks and bores, lee waves.
46. Spin up and spin down in varous containers (characteristic timescales, symmetry breaking, etc.).
47. Discharge tube illustrates dependence of ionization on pressure.
48. Exothermic re-heaters need trigger to undergo liquid => solid phase change.
49. Instability and transition.
50. 聽 Flow avoids topography in a rapidly rotating fluid.
51. Drop tube with viscous fluid illustrates dependence of terminal velocity on size.
52. Simple demonstration of planforms and wavelength selection in evaporation driven convection (Marangoni or combined surface-tension/buoyancy).
53. Simple convection cell shows planforms on projection screen.
54. Convection of viscous fluid in a frying pan shows patterns and wavelength selection.
55. 鈥 Large: Illustrate cyclostrophic balance鈥
56.
57. Simple tools to illustrate stretching and tilting.
58. Illustrate phase and group velocity. Resonance.
59. Laterally forced capillary-gravity waves in a closed basin. Show dispersion relation, non-linear pattern selection, spatio-temporal chaos.
60. Mechanical demonstration of transverse waves. Restoration due to tension.
61. 聽 Water channel illustrates flow over mountain, shocks and bores, lee waves.

Note: Some demonstration write ups include movie clips. Some of these are in two versions: a relatively short QuickTime movie with a small area on the screen, and a QuickTime 鈥淏ig Screen鈥 version that is much larger on the screen (typically 720 x 480 pixels), but which takes much longer to download. The file size for 鈥淏ig Screens鈥 is 3 鈥 20 MegaBytes, while the regular movies are generally less than a MegaByte. The Big Screen version is provided for possible stand-alone use by itself as a class video.