William Bethard Physics
Logan Hennes Physics
Michael Olson Professor of Physics
Terry Jo Leiterman Professor of Mathematics
Presentation Time: April 28
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Abstract
We report on the design, construction, and operation of a rotational mixing apparatus that magnetically rotates a thin metal rod interacting with tracers suspended in a high-viscosity fluid. The purpose of this apparatus is to achieve Stokes flow, defined as having a Reynolds number below 0.001, where viscous forces dominate over inertial forces in a fluid system. The apparatus, designed using 3D modeling software and constructed using additive manufacturing techniques, holds a rod at a fixed angle with a magnetic field and rotates the rod conically about a fixed point. Tracer trajectories within the fluid were tracked using a custom implementation of the Open-CV python library that analyzed video of the fluid mixing captured by a document camera. It is intended that this apparatus will be used in future research to investigate rotational mixing of viscous fluids, with applications to clinical research in medical science.
