The Curls of Water
Digital Water, Discrete Flow, and Curly Eddies
Simulating water is a challenge for scientific models of water circulation, water flow, and water as a medium in general. Already Leonardo da Vinci failed in depicting water and its structural potentiality. In particular understanding and describing turbulent flow has occupied researchers for centuries. In 1858, Hermann von Helmholtz paper entitled Über Integrale der hydro-dynamischen Gleichungen, welche den Wirbelbewegungen entsprechen (English translation in 1867 entitled On the integrals of the hydrodynamical equations, which express vortex motion) was a first attempt to conceptually grasp the forms of water flow, in particular turbulent flow. In the 1880s Osborne Reynolds derived at some insights about the transition from laminar to turbulent flow based on his experimental studies on the forms of water flow. However, until today the question how to describe and model turbulent flow is still under investigation. The paper presents the scientific attempt to tackle the problem of the curls of water.