Events Calendar

2015 John Laufer Lecture

Speaker: Harry L. Swinney, Sid Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Department of Physics at College of Natural Sciences at University of Texas at Austin

Talk Title: Internal Gravity Wave Energy in the Oceans

Abstract: Internal gravity waves occur inside fluids whose density varies with depth, as happens in the atmosphere, oceans, and protoplanetary disks. In the oceans the internal waves produced by tidal flow over bottom topography travel thousands of kilometers, affecting ocean mixing and currents, and ultimately impacting the climate. However, it is difficult to make accurate estimates of the total internal wave energy in the oceans because of the complexity of ocean topography and the constructive and destructive interference of the waves. This talk presents results from laboratory experiments, numerical simulations, and ocean observations that yield insight into internal wave dynamics and improve estimates of the total internal wave energy.

Biography: Harry L. Swinney received a BS in physics from Rhodes College (1961) and a PhD in physics from Johns Hopkins University (1968). He held faculty appointments at New York University and City College of New York before moving in 1978 to the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1970s Swinney and J.P. Gollub found that fluid flow between concentric cylinders with the inner one rotating exhibited a transition from flow characterized by two incommensurate frequencies to chaotic flow; this was the first laboratory study of chaotic behavior. Later, at the University of Texas, Swinney showed that the strange (chaotic) attractors that had been discussed by theorists actually occur in laboratory systems. In the past three decades Swinney’s research group has examined chaos and pattern formation in a variety of fluid, chemical, solid, granular, and biological systems. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1992. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He was awarded the American Physical Society Fluid Dynamics Prize, the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics Moser Lecture Prize, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal of the European Geophysical Union, and the Boltzmann Medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.

Location: Ronald Tutor Campus Center (TCC) - Ballroom A

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Valerie Childress