January 20, 2020: Ocean Circulation and Climate Dynamics Colloquium

11:00, Lecture Hall, Düsternbrooker Weg 20

“Man sollte einfach viel mehr spielen!“ oder "Teaching ocean and atmosphere dynamics with rotating tanks"

Experiencing ocean and atmosphere dynamics “live” in the class room is the goal of our recently funded PerLe project “Ocean currents in a tank: from dry theory to juicy reality”. At the heart of the project is the introduction of hands-on tank experiments to the Bachelor course Atmosphären- und Ozeandynamik”. Our goal is motivating the students to tackle the difficult theoretical background of the hydrodynamic equations and large-scale motions from a different angle. For this we have acquired four rotating tanks with a diameter of 35 cm driven by small battery-powered Lego-Motors. This allows us to work in small groups of 3-4 students meaning everybody gets a turn. Being able to carry out an experiment, to observe and to draw the connections to the “big” ocean is fundamental knowledge. It also creates teachable moments for the important idea of scaling and simplification, which we heavily rely on to reduce the complexity of the hydrodynamic equations. Without such approaches no modern climate model would exist. In this seminar we will briefly introduce the project and new equipment for the class room. Then everybody is invited to play and explore with our four rotating tanks. We hope to engage everybody in a limited set of experiments. Explore “ocean currents in a tank” yourself!

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