The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites you to a colloquium featuring Dr. Mark Hoefer, Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Colorado, Boulder. Dr. Hoefer will present his talk, “How Corn Syrup Can Display Effectively Frictionless Flow,” Tuesday, April 5, at 4:10 p.m. in Webster B17.
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 3:45 – 4:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: The interface between two high contrast viscous liquids, one rising buoyantly within the other, exhibits remarkable nonlinear wave dynamics. The interface of a buoyant, deformable, fluid-filled “pipe” can support the long time propagation of solitons and dispersive shock waves, expanding nonlinear wavetrains. Such structures are well-known in superfluids, such as a Bose-Einstein condensate, so it is surprising that these dynamics can occur in aqueous and pure corn syrup. Beginning with a live demonstration of effectively frictionless flow in corn syrup, this talk will describe the physics and experimental observation of solitons and dispersive shock waves in viscous fluid conduits. This rich and versatile model system will be used to explore the coherent dynamics of interacting solitons and shocks, including the refraction or absorption of a soliton by a shock and the merger of two dispersive shocks. Universal implications for other dispersive hydrodynamic systems will be described, including the potential for a soliton gas, an incoherent, large collection of interacting solitons.
