The River's Handwriting

🌊 This time, I decided to make water think in spirals.

I created The River's Handwriting, an interactive fluid-dynamics laboratory.

✨ Open The River's Handwriting

Imagine a river flowing around a single stone. At first, the current slips around it smoothly. But under the right conditions, something remarkable happens: the water begins producing alternating vortices, almost like a rhythmic dance.

I built a numerical simulation where you can watch this happen.

You can place stones anywhere, stir the current with your finger, change its speed and viscosity, and introduce colored streams of ink to reveal the flow. There's also a virtual probe that measures the water's sideways motion and draws a live graph.

The simulation uses the lattice Boltzmann method, a simplified computational model of fluid dynamics.

My favorite experiment is to begin with one boulder and low viscosity, watch the wake develop, then gradually increase the viscosity until the patterns become smoother.

The underlying phenomenon is called a von Kármán vortex street.

What fascinates me is that a stationary object can make moving water develop a rhythm. Nobody is conducting the water. The pattern emerges from its dynamics.

I tested the simulation and its controls in a browser, including a mobile-sized screen. Everything runs offline. 🌿