Notes From Norway, Part 1 (I'm Pretty Sure There Will Be No Part 2) -- August 23, 2019

Physics - the Kelvin angle: a 127-year-old physics riddle was solved by two Norwegian grad students and their Norwegian professor who challenged the 1887 "law." Link here.

From the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Whoo-hoo!

I guess science is never settled -- except for global warming.

The professor worked out his challenge with pencil and paper; his grad students did the experiments and have the video to prove it.

Just a bit from the article:

[The professor] solved a problem regarding the so-called Kelvinangle in boat wakes, which has been unchallenged for 127 years. The boat wake is the v-shaped pattern that a boat or canoe [or mallard duck] makes when moving through the water. You've undoubtedly seen one at some point.

It has long been assumed that the angle of the v-shaped wake behind a boat should always be just below 39 degrees, as long as the water isn't too shallow. Regardless whether it's behind a supertanker or a duck, this should always be true. Or not. For like so many accepted facts, this turns out to be wrong, or at least not always the case. Ellingsen showed this. 

Ellingsen is most likely the physicist who proved some years ago -- again using college physics -- that honeybees cannot fly.

Wiki has a page on "wakes" but the Hannover.de site is so much more interesting.

Something tells me that Richard Feynman could explain this much better using nothing more than plastic straws floating in the ocean.

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From the first round of the PGA FedEx Tour Championship:

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The Dance Page 

Cry To Me, Rocco & Claudia
The cha-cha was one of four basic dances I was taught at an Arthur Murray dance studio in Pasadena, CA, many decades ago. To be more accurate, the young woman tried to teach me to dance, but I was an abysmal failure. I think it was the music she selected. Or perhaps it was the Pelvic angle law.