Events

National Center for Supercomputing Applications master calendar

View Full Calendar

NCSA staff who would like to submit an item for the calendar can email newsdesk@ncsa.illinois.edu.

Physics Colloquium - "The Life and Death of Turbulence"

Event Type
Lecture
Sponsor
UIUC Department Of Physics
Location
Via ZOOM - see description for information
Date
Sep 23, 2020   4:00 pm  
Speaker
Nigel Goldenfeld, University of Illinois
Contact
Suzanne Hallihan
E-Mail
shalliha@illinois.edu
Phone
217-333-3760
Views
70
Originating Calendar
Physics - Colloquium

Turbulence is the last great unsolved problem of classical physics. But there is no consensus on what it would mean to actually solve this problem. In this colloquium, I propose that turbulence is most fruitfully regarded as a problem in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and will show that this perspective explains turbulent drag behavior measured over 80 years, and makes predictions that have been experimentally tested in 2D turbulent soap films. I will also explain how this perspective is useful in understanding the laminar-turbulence transition, establishing it as a non-equilibrium phase transition whose critical behavior has been predicted and tested experimentally.  This work connects transitional turbulence with statistical mechanics and renormalization group theory, high energy hadron scattering, the statistics of extreme events, and even population biology.

The ZOOM link will be sent on Wednesday morning to the Physics Faculty, Graduate student, PDRA, and AP mailing lists. If you are not on one of those lists and are interested in attending, please email Suzanne Hallihan at shalliha@illinois.edu for the link.

link for robots only