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in repose after all the hard work
this image follows on from an earlier doublebubble stage posted a few days back
The International Space Station is a maze of modules filled with racks, cables and experiments running 24/7. Upgrading and shifting units from one place to another becomes a tricky task in space – there is no up or down, and everything is weightless.
ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst has been recently busy with one of the facilities in Europe’s Columbus module. The Fluid Science Laboratory measures fluid dynamics in weightlessness.
Scientists are interested in how foams, emulsions and granular materials – materials easily deformed by thermal fluctuations and external forces – behave without the effects of gravity.
On Earth, buoyancy-driven convection and sedimentation can mask the underlying phenomena that scientists would like to observe. Without gravity, it is possible to study the samples disentangled from theses processes.
After 10 years of service, it was time for the Fluid Science Laboratory to get a revamp. Alexander installed a new video management unit to record experiments for analysis on Earth. He also installed the Soft Matter Dynamics instrument, at the bottom of the unfastened Fluid Science Laboratory in this image.
This new instrument is equipped with cameras and sensors to detect very small changes in the samples with high accuracy. Soft matter is anything that can be deformed by mechanical or thermal means at room temperature.
“The instrument allows us to observe the dynamics of soft matter materials down to the microsecond,” explains Marco Braibanti, complex fluids scientists at ESA.
Soft matter research can lead to industrial applications. Many components found in food, cosmetics and pharmacy products must stay stable for long periods of time. Experiments with the Soft Matter Dynamics can help improve the stability of foams, emulsions, gels and aerosols.
With this latest upgrade the Fluid Science Laboratory is ready to receive yet another unit later in 2019: the Multiscale Boiling experiment. Scientists will study boiling phenomena and the role of various forces acting on vapour bubbles.
The Fluid Science Laboratory is one of many instruments supporting sophisticated research in Europe’s Columbus module. Celebrating its 10th year in operation, the lab is the European hub for research in life and physical sciences, space science, Earth observation and technology demonstrations on the International Space Station.
Alexander is performing many more experiments during his six month Horizons mission. Follow along for all the exciting science he’s performing and on the Horizons mission blog.
Credits: ESA/NASA
I reassembled my shoot-from-below equipment, and spent too much time trying to get things working and aligned, but I got several shots I liked. Here is one of them.
The 2nd excursion / port day of our Caribbean Cruise (on the Norwegian Breakaway).
Norwegian Breakaway
North Atlantic Ocean, US Virgin Islands
Wednesday, December 18th, 2019
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This article is about dispersion of waves on a water surface. For other forms of dispersion, see Dispersion (disambiguation). In fluid dynamics, dispersion of water waves generally refers to frequency dispersion, which means that waves of different wavelengths travel at different phase speeds. Water waves, in this context, are waves propagating on the water surface, and forced by gravity and surface tension. As a result, water with a free surface is generally considered to be a dispersive medium.
Surface gravity waves, moving under the forcing by gravity, propagate faster for increasing wavelength. For a given wavelength, gravity waves in deeper water have a larger phase speed than in shallower water. In contrast with this, capillary waves only forced by surface tension, propagate faster for shorter wavelengths.
Besides frequency dispersion, water waves also exhibit amplitude dispersion. This is a nonlinear effect, by which waves of larger amplitude have a different phase speed from small-amplitude waves.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispersion_(water_waves)