PREVIOUSLY: WE LEARNED ABOUT CONVETION
This is part II of a series where I try to describe what's going on in the Earth's mantle using colorful model output and resisting the overwhelming temptation to bore you with a lot of math.
Here is the formation of a two-dimensional convective cell from an initially unstable situation. The material in this model is similar to that of the upper mantle, peridotite, so this model spans about 60 million years because that's solid rock moving about! The temperature profile, however, is not like that of the mantle, so it kind of looks nothing like this.
Sorry this isn't animated, but these are the steady state convective cells of the same situation this time in three dimensions! These particular steady state convective cells have different Rayleigh numbers which means they have different material properties (mainly viscosity of the solid rock being modeled as a fluid). They Rayleigh number is a dimensionless fluid dynamic number we use to make calculations slightly easier. To be honest they're still pretty hard.
In this run of the model, I tweaked the material properties so this never converges to a steady state convective cell. I think it serves as an excellent example of how convection attempts to bring a system to thermal equilibrium because you can watch chunks of cool material try and make their way to the bottom of the cell while chunks of hotter material rise buoyantly.
I am serious about creating a more quantitative and thorough guide to the physics of convection and their applications to the inside of this planet. Please get at me if you would be interested in something like that, or on any other subject that I'm really good at. I would make sure it would not require an extensive background in math or physics, although these things require a lot of math and physics. So basically you'd get the opportunity to learn some really complicated geophysics without all the grunt work! I think that sounds rad. This shit gets pretty complicated but I have a knack for dumbing it down, after all, I have to teach it to myself.
Thanks for reading.