#rotating flow

The vivid bands of a gas giant like Jupiter come from the planet's combination of rotation and convection. It's possible to create the same effect in a lab by rapidly spinning a tank of water around a central ice core.  (Image credit: C. David et al.)

In planetary atmospheres, energy and vorticity can cascade from large scales to smaller ones, but the mechanics of this transfer remain somewhat elusive. In a recent experiment, researchers built a lab-scale representation of an atmosphere using a meter-scale rotating annular tank. (Image credit: tank - H. Scolan, animation - S. Ding et al.; research credit: S. Ding et al.; via APS)

High-speed cameras are an amazing tool in fluid dynamics, but they come with a whole host of challenges. The camera and lighting have to be positioned to deal with reflections, the data sets are enormous, and post-processing all that data takes a long time. (Video and image credit: D. Sun et al.)

Fluid dynamics often comes down to a competition between the different forces acting in a flow. Inertia, surface tension, viscosity, gravity, rotation -- flows can be affected by all of these and more.  (Video and image credit: UCLA SpinLab)

The world's largest iceberg, A23a, is stuck. It's not beached; there are a thousand meters or more of water beneath it. But thanks to a quirk of the Earth's rotation, combined with underwater topology, A23a is stuck in place, spinning slowly for the foreseeable future.  (Image credit: A23a - D. Fox/BAS, diagram - IBSCO/NASA; via BBC News; submitted by Anne R.) Read the full article

Rotating flows are full of delightful surprises. Here, the folks at the UCLA SpinLab demonstrate the power a little buoyancy has to liven up a flow.  (Video and image credit: UCLA SpinLab) Read the full article

The Earth's inner core is a hot, solid iron-rich alloy surrounded by a cooler, liquid outer core. The convection and rotation in this outer core creates our magnetic fields, but those magnetic fields can, in turn, affect the liquid metal flowing inside the Earth.  (Image credit: C. Finley et al.; research credit: A. Pothérat et al.; via APS Physics) Read the full article

If you spin a tank of water at a constant speed, it takes on a curved, parabolic shape--a demonstration often called Newton's bucket. Here, a team from UCLA shows how it's done, both in terms of the equipment needed and a concise explanation of the physics. (Video and image credit: UCLA SpinLab)