Simon learned about this experiment from Physics Girl and tried several variations with a number of plastic plates and frisbees. He even got kicked out of a fashionable pool in Southern France for doing weird stuff with a plastic plate in the water. “Are you stupid or something?” the guard yelled at me when I tried to explain that it was a science experiment.
This video is a rather short visual summary of what two connected
vortices actually look like.
If you want to hear Simon explain the Physics behind the phenomenon, check out this longer video:
And here is yet another video with Simon trying (not extremely successfully) to add food colouring to emphasise the vortices’ shape. We actually set up a huge inflatable kiddy pool specifically for that last try. Anything for science!
Geeks out of the box 