Maths, but not as you know it…
80% of marine pollution comes from the land via rivers, and so by understanding where river water goes, we can focus our clean-up efforts on the most susceptible areas. Live interview with BBC Radio Oxford.
Come and watch me explain my research in full detail at New Scientist Live on Friday 11th October 2019.
My PhD thesis on modelling the spread of river water in the ocean in its entirety – not for the faint hearted! Unless you are a researcher in fluid mechanics, I strongly recommend reading the summary articles here before tackling the beast below. If you have any questions/comments please do get in touch via the contact form.
Freezing bubbles are not only beautiful, but also demonstrate incredibly complex physics. Here, Professor Jonathan Boreyko explains how bubbles freeze with examples of slow motion videos filmed in his laboratory at Virginia Tech.
This video is part of a collaboration between FYFD and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics featuring a series of interviews with researchers from the APS DFD 2017 conference.
Sponsored by FYFD, the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and the UK Fluids Network. Produced by Tom Crawford and Nicole Sharp with assistance from A.J. Fillo.
Video of my ‘Teddy Talk’ at the 2019 St Edmund Hall open day.
Rivers are the major source of pollution in the oceans and if we are to clean them up, we first need to know where the majority of the pollution is concentrated. By creating a mathematical model for river outflows – verified by laboratory experiments and fieldwork – the goal is to be able to predict which areas are most susceptible to pollution from rivers and thus coordinate clean-up operations as effectively as possible.
The brazil nut effect describes the movement of large particles to the top of a container after shaking. The same effect also occurs in avalanches where large blocks of ice and rocks are seen on the surface, and in a box of cereal where the large pieces migrate to the top and the smaller dusty particles remain at the bottom. In this video, Nathalie Vriend and Jonny Tsang from the University of Cambridge explain how the granular fingering instability causes granular convection and particle segregation, with examples of experiments and numerical simulations from their research.
This video is part of a collaboration between FYFD and the Journal of Fluid Mechanics featuring a series of interviews with researchers from the APS DFD 2017 conference. Sponsored by FYFD, the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and the UK Fluids Network. Produced by Tom Crawford and Nicole Sharp with assistance from A.J. Fillo.
My video ‘how plesiosaurs ruled the ocean with their flippers’ has been shortlisted for a prize in the On Zientzia science video competition. You can vote for my entry by clicking here and rating the video out of 5 stars.
“The aim of the competition is to promote the production and dissemination of short, original videos that foment positive and progress values of science and technology, and that can be used by any kind of public for consultation purposes. The subject is totally free and can deal with one’s own or other people’s research, red-hot issues in society or the scientific community, personal scientific and technical passions, basic science concepts, scientific milestones, historical figures and science of the future or the past.”
The final episode of Tom Rocks Maths on Oxide Radio for 2018 goes out with a bang. We’ve got another million-dollar maths problem, a healthy dose of nakedness, and we try chopping up traffic cones with a saw. Plus, music from Jay-Z/Linkin Park, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Foo Fighters. This is maths, but not as you know it…
Five-time Olympic Biathlon Skiing Champion Martin Fourcade enlisted the help of two scientists – Caroline Cohen and Christophe Clanet at Ecole Polytechnique – to help to decide the best type of wax to use on his skis in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Here’s how they did it…
Sponsored by FYFD, the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, and the UK Fluids Network. Produced by Tom Crawford and Nicole Sharp with assistance from A.J. Fillo.
Creating scientifically accurate nail art whilst discussing my research in fluid dynamics with Dr Becky Smethurst and Dr Michaela Livingston-Banks at the University of Oxford.
We recorded 1h30mins of footage, so this is the heavily edited version of our chat ranging from the fluid dynamics equations needed to describe the flow of water in a river, the Coriolis effect, the experimental set up replicating this, and how these experiments can help with the clean up of pollution.
