Posted on 07/03/2002 11:39:30 PM PDT by Mike Darancette
As it turns out, God really is in the details.
In 1994, David Schmidt, a young Ph.D. candidate in engineering at the University of Wisconsin, was asked by his examiners to explain why thin shower curtains "suck in" whenever the water is turned on.
The solution to the riddle, like Fermat's last theorem, proved remarkably elusive. According to one theory, "curtain suck" is the product of the Bernoulli principle, which holds that pressure drops as air, water and other fluids accelerate, leading to lift. (This same principle explains how planes fly.) Yet another theory - the bouyancy theory - holds that curtain suck is the result of a disequilibrium between the hot air inside the shower space and the cold air without, which pushes in the shower curtain. But this theory fails to account for the persistence of curtain suck when the shower is run cold.
Intrigued, Schmidt, now at the University of Massachusetts, pressed ahead with the investigation. He designed a $28,000 piece of software that allowed him to model the flow of air and water within a simulated image of his mother-in-law's bathtub. He then filled the "tub" with 50,000 tetrahedral cells, which can detect velocity and pressure. Following that, he turned on a virtual shower that flooded his virtual tub with four gallons of virtual water over a period of 30 seconds. Then he let his computer crunch the numbers.
Two weeks and 1.5 trillion calculations later, Schmidt had his answer. Aerodynamic drag causes water droplets to decelerate, transferring energy to the air and creating air currents akin to a tiny hurricane. Low pressure in the eye of that hurricane then tugs on the lower end of the shower curtain. Voila! It sucks in.
WELCOME TO the curious world of climate modeling. As Schmidt's experiment makes clear, simply to understand shifting climate patterns in the space of a bathtub is no small matter. Yet today, huge political controversies have been stirred on the basis of climate forecasts for the entire globe, stretching decades into the future. According to the Worldwatch Institute, in the 21st century "the climate battle may assume the kind of strategic importance that wars - both hot and cold - had during the 20th."
Preferably people with way too much free time on their hands . ;-)
I think that was mentioned in the article. I stand on my theory, until somebody with a thin, nylon shower curtain shows up with negative results.
Sorry, I should have read it more slowly.
>I stand on my theory
OK everybody, all freepers to the showers and report back here with the shower curtain results. --ggg--.
On another note, Bettles, Alaska got a record cold 40 degrees today, and it also snowed, which is unheard of in July. June or August, sure, but not July.
Gotta be all that global warming running around loose thats doing it. --gg--.
Ok, all of ya'll troglodytes, turn pivotal issues over to DuPont and Sandia Labs. SeifIcare. Let your tax money be awarded to liberal universities and subsidize junk science. What would Nikola Tesla say? Shame on ya'll.
Yep, I think he'd head right for the shower on this one.
Check out sea ice extent (~ normal) and snow coverage in Eurasia (record breaking) as of 13 Feb 2006. Reality and the models diverge further ....
Sad to say but the Watermelons still continue their agitprop and it seems that even some Evangelical Preachers are climbing on board this train to nowhere.
It boggles my mind how in the face of increasing evidence that the skeptics are correct, the warmers will not relent and actually are getting more entrenched.
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