Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability

I recently filmed a short interview with Professor Mike Merrifield about Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.

Professor Merrifield - based in the University of Nottingham's Physics Department - nicely described the effect with pencil and paper.

My oft-collaborator Pete McPartlan later did some nifty work to "animate" this description.

But before releasing the video, we started looking at other videos which demonstrated the effect.

The first one we noticed was this, by Professor Grae Worster at Cambridge. I emailed him and he kindly gave his approval for me to use the footage if it was helpful.

But then I found another video - this one - and to my surprise it was filmed by students at the University of Nottingham. (I notice the logo on the lab coats before reading the description)

I contacted them on Facebook and they told me the apparatus still existed in the university's Faculty of Engineering  - they said I should contact Dr Barbara Turnbull.

So it was back to Nottingham for another day of filming. The result is a few videos.

This one is the main interview with Mike, now illustrated by both Pete's animations AND Dr Turnbull's demonstration.

Then a second video just showing how the experiment worked... I thought it was worth it's own extra film.

And for the real diehards, the full slow motions that can pored over in detail.