Ocean Sciences Meeting, San Diego, Monday morning 8 a.m.

Here we go, a full week of exciting science presentations lies ahead of us. The Ocean Sciences Meeting is a large scientific conference devoted entirely on new discoveries in ocean physics, biology, chemistry, … from hot topics in the tropics to cool stuff in the rapidly changing polar regions. About 5,000 scientists from around the […]

ENSO Crafternoon – building recharge oscillator models to understand fundamental ENSO dynamics

by Joke Lübbecke The El Niño – Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is a climate phenomenon that entails pronounced warm or cold surface anomalies in the eastern equatorial Pacific and has impacts on the weather around the globe. In a master level class students are introduced to some fundamental theories about ENSO. One of them, the so-called […]

When you dare say what everybody else is thinking…

Using “One should really play more!” as title of a presentation in a serious scientific colloquium might seem like a bold move, but the gamble payed off: a large, interested audience including everyone from students to professors enthusiastically dropped ice cubes and food dye in our LEGO-driven rotating tanks and passionately discussed their observations. On […]

Observing how rotating systems behave differently from non-rotating ones

One might ask oneself why we are insisting on rotating tank experiments. In order to establish that rotation isn’t just there to make equations a lot more complicated, but that it actually changes how things behave, we ran two different experiments. Turbulence in rotating and non-rotating system First the probably easiest experiment anyone could imagine: […]

The DIYnamics rotating table and our experiences with it

The inspiration for Torge’s and my PerLe teaching innovation project was a 2018 article by the DIYnamics team in which “affordable rotating fluid demonstrations for geoscience education” are presented. We were first intrigued, then excited, and since I have always wanted to have a rotating table to play with at home, there was nothing to […]

Giving Atmosphere-Ocean Dynamics a new spin

oder: Man muss einfach vielmehr spielen! After teaching atmosphere and ocean dynamics (AOD) for a couple of years I wanted to introduce something new to this course, which is part of the BSc program Physik des Erdsystems (Physics of the Earth system) at Kiel University. The course is kind of a tutorial accompanying the lecture. […]