Laminar flow....how cool is this?

Lamin...what??!! Never heard of it? Well that is not surprising, but you have seen it in your life at some point, and it is really cool to understand what it is, and how it happens.

To understand this we need to delve a little into fluid dynamics to understand what properties cause this to happen.
As liquid or gas flows, it is a lot of the same particles going in a specific direction, however elements like heat difference and certain viscous materials influence the way that flow happens. So even though it seems like a single flow of water coming out of a pipe, in reality there are layers within the water moving in a common direction due to the pressures pushing it in that direction (you opened the tap and the council pressure pushes it out) and now it pushes aside the air as it falls out.

Here is a depiction of that happening in 2 ways. Laminar flow and turbulence

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If the liquid or gas is travelling within all its layers at the same speed without any interference, it achieves Laminar flow, where none of the layers are mixing or disturbing each other. This can happen even if there is an object in the way like a wing or nozzle.
If there is a disturbance in the flow, and the layers mix, you get turbulence and the water flowing like you see most of the time.c
The speeds and uniformity of the flow is not the same among the layers of the liquid or gas, and it becomes 'messy'.

Laminar flow is often described as moving playing cards...even if they are moving a little differently to each other (layers in the liquid or gas), they don't mix because of the layers moving uniformly in the same direction.

Places you've most probably seen it already

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Some of the Key points:

1. Laminar flow is smooth and turbulence is not
2. The layers within the liquid or gas do not cross each other in laminar flow. In turbulence they do
3. Velocity in the flow of liquids and gas is even throughout to reach laminar flow. Within turbulence the velocity is uneven

There are great videos on YouTube showing you how to create Laminar flow from your hose pipes, so if you're intrigued and into that sort of things take a look, and let me know how it goes.

Here is a video showing the transition from laminar to turbulent. Take a look at the blue liquid as it remains in the layers when in laminar flow, but when turbulent you can't even make out the lines of blue liquid...its a mess of mixed stuff.

What is cool about laminar flow, is that should you put your finger or something in the way of a laminar flow, then it sprays out evenly, looking like a liquid umbrella or perfect glass plate of sorts.

Here are some cool videos of Laminar flow however:

So even though it sounded like gibberish in the beginning, I'm sure you have seen this at some point in your life, and can now appreciate what in fact this is.

Keep well my friends!

[Image and information credit is YouTube,