Pages

Friday, September 01, 2006

That crazy fluid flow

This article in the July edition of the journal "Nature," Van Gogh painted perfect turbulence - The disturbed artist intuited the deep forms of fluid flow, could have just as easily been called "crazy guy interprets impossibly hard fluid dynamics." Or something to that effect. Maybe "get crazy, pass fluids!" (As in 'fluids' the engineering class, not actually the bodily passing of fluids. Eew.)

The point is, that it's pretty crazy that Van Gogh's crazy swirly paterns that made up a good portion of his famous works are rediculously accurate models of fluid flow. Even crazier, is the fact that this only worked when he was, well, crazy. His paintings done while he was medicated lack the detail and accuracy of his unmedicated works. Ah, absinth.

(Okay, just rechecked the link... Nature now wants you to pay $3 to read it... so screw them. Go to the Baylor College reprint instead.)

No comments: