Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Reading 3/5/2008: Sections 3.4-3.5

Section 3.4: Very cool; we have a number that can tell is whether we make the assumption of diffusion-dominance or vorticity-dominance. Makes sense to me, though where do we get the characteristic length scale from? And why does it shrink with turbulence? Otherwise, everything is clear.

Section 3.5: The derivation of small Bernoulli is very straightforward, though the result is quite cool. For big Bernoulli, we demand that a flow is irrotational - where are some examples where this really breaks down in a big way? Also, how might one measure &phi, the velocity potential function, much less its time rate of change?

The connection with the Laplacian here makes sense given our assumptions, but is a nice touch. The dipole/etc. thing is worth discussing in class. I've never understood physicists' fascinating with dipoles, but maybe I can with a little more detail.

No comments: