The Mystery of the Cumulus Cloud
In this talk, fluid-dynamicist Roddam Narasimha presented his work with Cummulus clouds. Cummulus clouds are those clouds which have a flat base but are large and fluffy. He began by sharing his fascination with clouds, which began at an early age. A firm believer in the trans-disciplinary nature of knowledge, he presented examples from classical Indian literature and art depicting clouds.
In the second half of the lecture Roddam gave the audience a flavour of scientific rigour and the extent of details involved in such work. He proceeded to tell us what is known about these clouds and how they can be created artificially on a computer and in a lab. He left us with pictures of these artificial clouds as we marvelled at their realistic appearance.
Check out the complete blog by Mediator Nomaan here.
About the Fluid dynamicist
Roddam Narasimha is an Indian aerospace scientist and fluid dynamicist. He was formerly a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Director of National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) and the Chairman of Engineering Mechanics Unit at Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). He is presently an Honorary Professor at JNCASR and concurrently holds the Pratt & Whitney Chair in Science and Engineering at the University of Hyderabad. He has been awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, in 2013.
Narasimha’s research has been chiefly concerned with Aerospace Fluid Dynamics and certain related problems in the atmosphere. He has made extensive studies of transitions between laminar and turbulent flow (going in either direction), the structure of shock waves, various characteristics of fully developed turbulent flow (e.g. their memory, the bursting phenomenon in boundary layers), the fluid dynamics of clouds, near-surface temperature distributions and eddy fluxes in atmospheric boundary layers. He has been closely associated with Aerospace technology development in India at both technical and policy-making levels. During 1977-79, he was the Chief Project Coordinator at Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
Connected Exhibits and Programmes
The Monsoon Experiment - a historical object to study the Indian Monsoon
Creating Clouds by Roddam Narasimha - a workshop to stimulate clouds in a lab