Viscosity and Algae

Terrible.

Okay, so I did brush up on very BASIC fluid mechanics.

One thing that was prevalent in my previous research is how much viscosity impacted friction flow. From what I have found, viscosity has an inverse relationship with temperature - which is counter to what I had in my mind since friction factors change from summer to winter. I thought viscosity would have a direct relationship with visocity - ie, viscosity goes up, friction factor goes up.

So something else is at play here. I have some evidence that the spike in algal growth in the lakes coincide with the increase of friction factor - it's not really pronounced, but I do find we see an increase in the times where the lakes are turning over. When lakes turn over, more nutrients are stirred up in the lake. Could this be feeding the biofilm down the line? Can I quantify the types of biofilm to see what nutrients they need? Does the type of biofilm change from lake to lake, i.e., is the biofilm in RC similar to the biofilm in CC? Does nitrification occur in RC in the same area that it does in CC? Is this time/velocity related, which could impact colony locations.

So I need to get a program going to measure viscosity of lake water. I would like to do it on the same day the algal counts are made.

Resource: http://www.hydramotion.com/portable.html

I found a book that has a lot of good information regarding how some experimental fluid mechanics get done. I found it when running a google search on "how to measure viscosity of water"

Springer Handbook of Experimental Fluid Mechanics / Edition 1

• by Cameron Tropea
• Other Format
• (2007)

It's at Barnes and Noble.