Jonathan Toledo, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill


Spinning Rods: Experiment and Theory

Abstract: The fluid motion induced by a slender rod attached to a plane and sweeping out an upright cone is examined in a table-top experiment for the cases of a rod with cylindrical symmetry, and a rod where this symmetry is broken. In the case of a symmetric rod, time scales corresponding to an epicycle and to an orbit are observed, and the experiment is used to validate an asymptotic solution for this geometry in the stokes flow regime. For the asymmetric rod, a third time scale is observed corresponding to a large-scale flow, and measurements are shown to agree qualitatively with numerical simulations based on singularity theory.


Undergraduate Mentors: Roberto Camassa and Rich McLaughlin (UNC)