11 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Physics, Astronomy, Earth and Planetary Science
instead of just randomly bubbling like a boiling pot?
If you really watch a boiling pot, you will see that it's not just "randomly bubbling." There is a pretty well defined and consistent pattern! And easy way to see this is to boil some long thin noodles in a relatively big pot. You will notice that the noodles orient themselves along the dominant currents.
Comment by TheGrumpyre at 26/04/2023 at 20:33 UTC*
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
True. For a pot of water, I'm assuming that the dominant currents are created by a combination of the shape of the confined pot and the fact the heat is more concentrated at the center though. I'm curious what physical features or forces would cause such regular prevailing currents in something that's always illustrated in textbooks as a featureless uniform sphere. What's so special about certain hot spots down at the core that causes hotter magma to constantly well up from there, and not from some other place?