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Module 1.2 · Topic 4
Module 1.2 · Topic 4
Beyond flowing and beyond sources — can the flow itself swirl in place?
Divergence caught whether tracer was being added or removed. Neither divergence nor concentration says anything about a completely different possibility — whether the flow itself is circulating, even while carrying the same total amount of fluid through a region.
A small paddle wheel, dropped into a flow, could plausibly spin in place if the surrounding fluid pushes harder on one side than the other. Could a flow field genuinely have this rotational tendency at a point, even while having zero divergence there — no fluid being added or removed?
Curl measures:
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