Upper-level Undergraduate Projects Course
 
 
 6 to 12 students meet 2 afternoons/week
Students with differing interests and expertise from a wide range of departments work on individual projects.  Digital data and imagery are incorporated into each project and the results are written for the web.  Project topics vary widely and have included hydrothermal flows in the deep sea, turbulent airflow around a building, avalanches, ground-water flow above an invasive salt wedge, wave action building a beach-slope, energy extraction from waves, salt fingers.
 
  
Chemical interaction of fluid and solids. In a porous medium, downward fluid flow carries dye tracers which interact with the solid phase. Color chromatography occurs both in the fluid, and with partial adsorption onto particles.  (M.Trute)                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                   
 
Solitary waves and undular bores.  This reflected light image shows an undular bore on the surface of water in a 5 m channel.  At small scale, these nearly-long surface wave phenomena involve both gravity waves and ripples, which radiate energy backward and forward (respectively) from the bore.  (Adrian Fehr)

Ground-water flow with seawater invasion.  This sand layer has a fresh-water lens maintained by rainfall and a saltwater wedge invading from the right (darker water).  The red dye spots show the evolving flow of the freshwater to the right and its interaction with the salt wedge.  (G. Van der Jagt)

  

Topographic flow visualized with streaming threads. In our recirculating flume, steady flow and hydraulics experiments are carried out. Here purple threads trace the flow round an obstacle, and its turbulent wake. The  flume has a wealth of gravity wave phenoma.  (D. Lucas)                                                             

 
 
Wind driven basin.  Wind drives a fluid with both mechanical stress and cooling.  Here a side view shows overturning turbulence driven when the evaporative cooling is particularly strong.  Cooling carries the motion to great depth, whereas wind effects can be more confined near the surface by stratification.  (Ramona Walker)