Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics

Not only is this demonstration one of my favorites, it’s a reader favorite, too. Even though I posted it nearly a year ago, I’ve had it resubmitted over and over. Here’s what I originally wrote:

Laminar flow (as opposed to turbulence) has the interesting property of reversibility. In this video, physicists demonstrate how flow between concentric cylinders can be reversed such that the initial fluid state is obtained (to within the limits of molecular diffusion, of course!)

For more examples, see the first half of this video.

The results of those videos might be surprising, but they highlight the difference between laminar flow and turbulence. In laminar flow, the motion of the dye is caused by molecular diffusion and momentum diffusion, the latter of which is exactly reversible. In turbulence, much of the fluid motion is tied up in momentum convection, which is irreversible. This is why you can “unstir” the glycerin but not the milk in your coffee.