So I was talking to my Fluid Dynamics professor yesterday and I was telling him about how we're trying to model the way that little bits of rock (tephra) get exploded out of a volcano in a column of turbulent gases and then how it subsequently gets picked up by the wind and transported for hundreds of kilometers before it finally hits the ground (on Mars). It starts out as liquid rock, of course, and then becomes kind of hot, squishy lava-y stuff, and then depending on how long it falls and how warm the air is it cools down and becomes rigid, and that makes it fall a different way. But anyway, I was telling him how it's kind of difficult sometimes because you have to describe the way that a large piece of rock starts out being totally encased and moved along (entrained) by the gas, but if it accidentally makes its way to the edge of the plume, there isn't enough gas there to continue pushing it up and it falls right out. The particles also interact with each other within the plume.

My professor studies the flow of blood in the human circulatory system. He said that this work is kind of the same to the kind we're doing mathematically because you have these platelets that must be moved along, entrained in this fluid, and they interact with one another and they interact with the boundary (in this case the wall of the vein or artery) and depending on their shape they move differently through the fluid (just like volcanic clasts). So I guess in some fundamental way, the flow of blood through your body is not unlike the continuous or periodic eruption of a fire fountain or explosive volcanic eruption, which I think is kind of poetic in a philosophical way.

He does some pretty detailed work on how particles interact while they're falling through the air... that was very poetic as well: there are three phases to a two particle interaction in the air. First the particles are falling and one is out front. The other one falls in behind it because it is drafting off of it. The first particle breaks the air and the second takes advantage of the draft just like a racecar driver, cyclist, or goose. I like grouping those three together. :P Because it has this advantage, it travels faster than the particle ahead of it and ends up catching up with it.
At once, they touch: this part is called "kissing". Drafting, drafting, and then finally the particles kiss, and then immediately they begin to tumble around one another, which is how they'll likely continue for the remainder of their fall through the medium. It's pretty cool because none of this stuff would happen if they were falling in a vacuum.

Anyway, I liked the idea of the particles kissing and then tumbling together until they crash into the Earth. Yet another of the millions of poetic and passionate interactions which go on every day that will be completely impossible to reconstruct once they are buried, become hard and brittle, and pass into the Geologic Record.

There's a reason I'm in computer engineering and not anything else. :p
» ikimashokie on 2007-03-23 11:59:02

ooooh. thats very poetic.
and ill be sure that my boobs get even treatment. because jealousy among the boobs is the worst kind.
» bananaface on 2007-03-24 12:19:54

He does SOME detailed work. Reading your blog I felt like I was in your class listening to lecture.

I guess I have compared a rupturing volcano to the blood in my veins. But only when I was upset. I wonder is the blood in my body flows as quickly as lava erupting from the volcano. I think that is off the subject a little bit huh? Ok, well the drugs are kicking in. Nite!
» KkaMA67 on 2007-03-24 03:58:43

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