Turbulence

Our lecturer quoted this poem by Lewis Fry Richardson when talking about Turbulence a few weeks ago.

"Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity,
and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on to viscosity."

The poem was inspired by this one by Jonathan Swift.

“So, naturalists observe, a flea
Hath smaller fleas on him that prey
And these hath smaller fleas to bite ‘em
And so proceed ad infinitum.”

The turbulence poem is quite clever as it encapsulates quite well the theory of turbulence. Another cool thing he showed us was this picture by Leonardo da Vinci. Which is quite an amazing drawing.

I find turbulence really quite fascinating and I'm glad that my lecturer showed us these interesting things that are related as it will help me remember what is happening.

If at first you don't succeed - try harder!

In "Letters to a young mathematician" Ian Stewart writes something along the lines of

'if you do not understand a text you are reading, make a note
of it and carry on reading as the part you do not understand may be explained
later.'

I read that bit yesterday (I got the book for Christmas) and didn't really expect that I would be following the advice the very next day.