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If you're programming a game where a boat moves through water, you might be tempted (as I would) to change the V-shape angle of the waves behind the boat based on how fast the boat was moving! What if I told you that that V-shaped angle is always 19.47°, regardless of how fast the boat is travelling? 😱 This pattern even holds true for a duck traversing a pond. 🦆 The envelope of these waves stands at a fixed angle, and the wake has a characteristic feathered pattern. 10 comments
Physicists have used satellite images and mathematical modelling to study narrower wakes associated with fast-moving boats. You can read about this discussion here: https://physicsworld.com/a/physicists-rethink-celebrated-kelvin-wake-pattern-for-ships/ Here's a quick derivation of how we find the 19.47 degree angle: https://personal.math.ubc.ca/~cass/courses/m309-01a/carmen/Mainpage.htm And as always... if you like this type of content, you'll probably like our lectures on Game Physics:   @pikuma Speaking of historical anecdotes of how something in fluid dynamics (with much broader applicability than fluids) was discovered, I always loved the origin story of solitons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton#History  @pikuma Fun! I studied wakefields in plasma, and you can get some really cool patterns from that 😊  |
Gregory's Server
This wake pattern was first explained mathematically by Lord Kelvin (William Thompson) and are known today as the Kelvin wake pattern.
Lord Kelvin described this pattern based on his observations and a rough interpretation of the physics involved. But nowadays we are studying other elements that come into play and can cause small differences based on the object's speed.