UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT DENVER

PLACE: Mathematics Conference Room 626 UCD Building, 1250 14th St., Denver

TIME: noon (Refreshments served at 11:45 am)

DATE: November 16, 1998

Experiments in vortex dominated flows and pattern formation - adaptation
to undergraduate research

Randall Tagg
UCD Department of Physics
rtagg@carbon.cudenver.edu

I will describe some basic problems with pattern selection and dynamics in
some fluid flow systems, and then discuss how investigation of these
problems has spawned an interesting variety of undergraduate research
projects, ranging from chaos in geometric acoustics to a preliminary
experiment on the effect of turbulence on freezing. The most important
prototype in my research is the Taylor-Couette problem of flow between
rotating cylinders, with  particular attention to nonlinear traveling
waves whose characteristics (wavenumber, group velocity, etc.) may be
tuned over a wide range. Other types of experiments are contemplated,
however, and I will conclude my talk by discussing directions that are
feasible for my laboratory. My hope is to discover an overlap in interests
with experts in computational methods for analyzing such systems.

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Randall Tagg
Department of Physics - Campus Box 157          Tel: 303-556-2293
University of Colorado at Denver                Fax: 303-556-6257
PO Box 173364
Denver, CO 80217-3364