Turbulence Around Heat Transport

[Roger Critchlow-2]

Okay, this one is for Nick, too, in his guise as a weather geek.

NASA Earth Observatory picked up the press release for this:

  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=41646&src=eorss-manews

But it turns out that the New Journal of Physics is open sourced, so you can go read the original paper:

  http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/11/12/123001

The gist is that they built an apparatus for observing heat flow in fluids at realistic Rayleigh numbers and discovered that the turbulent regime doesn't develop according to theory, it goes through at least two unexpected phase transitions both of which take the net heat transfer in the opposite direction from that expected.

-- rec --

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[Russ Abbott]

What struck me as strange and disappointing (although since I'm really not able to read the scientific details I may have missed it) was the lack of any discussion of the presumed underlying model. As I understand it the experiment showed that heat is transported between the hot and cold gases at rates that were different from what was expected. But why was there any expectation at all? What was the original model of how heat is supposed to be transported? And which parts of the model did the experiment though into doubt? All we now know (and I guess that knowing something is better than not knowing it) is that the results that were predicted by the existing equations were not matched by the experimental data.

-- Russ A

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:58 PM, Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> wrote:

Okay, this one is for Nick, too, in his guise as a weather geek.

NASA Earth Observatory picked up the press release for this:

  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/view.php?id=41646&src=eorss-manews

But it turns out that the New Journal of Physics is open sourced, so you can go read the original paper:

  http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1367-2630/11/12/123001

The gist is that they built an apparatus for observing heat flow in fluids at realistic Rayleigh numbers and discovered that the turbulent regime doesn't develop according to theory, it goes through at least two unexpected phase transitions both of which take the net heat transfer in the opposite direction from that expected.

-- rec --

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org