An Album of Fluid Motion

by Milton Van Dyke

Over 400 beautiful black-and-white photographs, collected from around the world, illustrate the great diversity of fluid motion. Flows ranging from creeping to hypersonic speeds, in both the laboratory and Nature, are observed directly, or made visible using smoke, ink, bubbles, particles, shadographs, schlieren, interferometry, and other techniques. Succinct captions describe the essential features of each flow.

Genres: Physics, Science, Nonfiction, Mathematics, Engineering, Art and Photography

176 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1982

Reviews

[Almudena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro lleno de imágenes preciosas y detalles sobre cómo se tomaron. A veces, el detalle técnico me pillaba un poco lejos ya, pero aún así, el mundo de la visualización de fluidos es fascinante.

[Gigi · Rating 5 out of 5]

esse livro é tão lindo quanto a tragédia de que eu nunca vou conseguir uma cópia física pra adicionar à minha biblioteca ( ˃̵ ⌓ ˂̵)

[Ettore Pasquini · Rating 4 out of 5]

If advances in design should take inspiration from natural phenomena, this is a great book.

While the author meant it as a photographic compendium of fluid-dynamics, I think its hidden value is in observing the figures that fluids make when they move -- be it at crawling or supersonic speeds -- as works of art. Some of the images are of great beauty: in a way it's surprising to discover it, but from another point of view we "know" these shapes intuitively because we have observed them or thought about them already in the past.

Plus, while I am no designer, I do think there's something to be learned in how nature spaces things, how it draws curves and creates angles, how it brings order to total chaos, and how it adds back the excitement of chaos to boring blandness.

[Jeff Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm largely self-taught in aerodynamics -- and while there were many other books that gave me the equations and the formalism, they wouldn't have made much sense to me without this book by my side. I don't know how anything can compete with so many images allowing you to SEE what the air (or other fluid) is doing in different flow regimes. I can't recommend it strongly enough, for either the casual or serious student.