vortexing | Water Calendar

The dancing plumes

Dancing plumes from irrigation sprinkler — Plumes of water emerging from an irrigation sprinkler. Lärjedalen gardens, outside Gothenburg, Sweden.
Photo: Lasse Johansson

Swish, swish, swish, I have to run to escape the plumes of water cascading round and round over the small field. Innumerable water droplets journey together, upwards, upwards, then turning, falling, dissolving into a cloud of rain. Down below, the garden plants gratefully receive the life-giving water drops, capturing the droplets with their leaves. Some droplets continue, trickling down onto the bare umber soil underneath, wetting the soil and darkening it. Seeking its way into the hollows, seeping down, absorbed by the clayey, colloid substance that forms the fertile topsoil. Continue reading The dancing plumes

When water freezes

Distilled water ice image — Ice image of distilled water: A sparse and ordered structure surrounds the core. Photo: From the Gisela Ahlberg collection, Institute of Ecological Technology. (The photos have been slightly colorized.)

The temperature drops, water cools, and suddenly, there is a crest of ice on the surface, slowly growing and deepening. Soon it will be so hard that we can touch it without destroying it, and even walk on it. Anyone who has been skating on a lake will know that there is ice and there is ice. Sometimes clear, sometimes so filled with air bubbles as to be almost completely opaque.

The Swedish water investigator Gisela Ahlberg decided to explore this, and devised a method, together with her colleague Christina Weldero, to study natural waters by ice images. Continue reading When water freezes

The water vortex

Water vortex in bucket — Water swirling in a bucket, with reflections of the sky in the water surface. A leaf is going with the flow.
Photo: Lasse Johansson

Round and round, the vortex swirls in the bucket, mixing whatever is in it. Perhaps one of our most mundane acquaintances with water is stirring it, although we seldom give the process a closer look. Stirring vigorously will only create a blur. But the moment we leave water on its own for a while, the curved spiralling shapes appear and stabilize. The vortex funnel has chosen its preferred form.

Does water mind how we stir it? Will it behave differently afterwards depending on our movements? Looking at water merely as a dead substance, we tend to relegate such questions to the fairy tales. But even a fairy tale can turn out to be true. And in this case – just as a good fairytale should – it is about a land down under. Continue reading The water vortex