报告题目：Thermal convection under our feet and beyond

报告时间：2018年1月18日上午9:00-10:30

报告地点：英国威廉希尔公司一楼报告厅

摘要：Thermal convection is ubiquitous in nature and can be found in our everyday lives. This subject has been studied by scientists and engineers for many decades, for its rich dynamics and vast applications. In this talk, I will first discuss an experiment as a free-moving floating boundary interacts with a fluid, which is heated from below and cooled from above. The top boundary is mobile and thermally opaque (poor conductor), causing the coupled system to oscillate. The underlying mechanism is similar to what has been powering the geophysical process of continental drift, as continents interact with the convective mantle of the earth. In the second experiment, a few seemingly impeding partitions or dividers are inserted into a convective fluid, but the

heat-flux that passes through is found to be boosted by several times. Theses results are explained and some new directions and phenomena (include the recent total solar eclipse in the US) that extend the classical picture of thermal convection are also discussed.