I'm a Nerd/Wedding - Part 3

I will include today’s "Wedding/Honeymoon Photo of the Day", but I have to share a story from last night . Late last night I was working on a manuscript and it was a little hot in my office area so I had the fan on. The fan was positioned such that it blew across the front of the window blinds. As a result, the blinds oscillated back and forth. I stared at it for a bit and pictured the turbulent structures that were rolling across the front of the blinds causing the oscillations and thought to myself “hey Brian I bet you can determine the size of your fan simply by looking at the blinds.” I first estimated the frequency by looking at a single blind and doing “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi” – the oscillations were at ~1.5 Hz. Next I needed to get a convection velocity so I estimated a foot of blinds and estimated the time it took for the wave front to get from the start to the finish – convection velocity was ~1 ft/s. Thus the size of my fan should be approximately 8 in (i.e. {12 in/s}/{1.5 1/s}= 8 in). I busted out my ruler to find that my fan diameter is more like 9.5 in…oh but wait. There is a ring around the outer edge that would break up that large of structures and what was its diameter…oh that’s right…8 inches. And that is how you a fluids nerd spends his nights.

And now for the "Wedding/Honeymoon Photo of the Day"…

The view from our sunset dinner on the beach.