Turbulence Quotes (4 quotes)
Big whorls have little whorls
Which feed on their velocity
And little whorls have lesser whorls,
And so on to viscosity.
[Concerning atmospheric turbulence.]
Which feed on their velocity
And little whorls have lesser whorls,
And so on to viscosity.
[Concerning atmospheric turbulence.]
Summary of paper, 'The Supply of Energy From and to Atmospheric Eddies' (1920). Quote reprinted in Weather Prediction by Numerical Process (1922), 66. Also quoted in Benoit Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1977, 1983), 402.
The earth’s atmosphere is an imperfect window on the universe. Electromagnetic waves in the optical part of the spectrum (that is, waves longer than X rays and shorter than radio waves) penetrate to the surface of the earth only in a few narrow spectral bands. The widest of the transmitted bands corresponds roughly to the colors of visible light; waves in the flanking ultraviolet and infrared regions of the optical spectrum are almost totally absorbed by the atmosphere. In addition, atmospheric turbulence blurs the images of celestial objects, even when they are viewed through the most powerful ground-based telescopes.
in an article promoting the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope
in an article promoting the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope
Scientific American (July 1977)
To fly, we have to have resistance. It’s all about turbulence.
Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.
Reacting to images of wave patterns in fluid motion.
In Maya Ying Lin, Jeff Fleming, Michael Brenson and Terri Dowell-Dennis, Topologies (1998), 38.
Turbulence is the most important unsolved problem of classical physics.
In The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
