The Flow Visualization Guidebook

The Flow Vis Guidebook is a new Open Educational Resource, lavishly illustrated and freely available online. It functions as a textbook to accompany a course at the University of Colorado, “Flow Visualization: the Physics and Art of Fluid Flow”, but it is designed to be accessible to a wide audience. The content begins with an overview of the flow visualization process, organized by the series of choices needed to create a flow visualization: 1: Phenomena - Why Does It Look Like That? 2: Visualization Techniques. 3: Lighting. 4: Photography. 5: Post Processing. The section on photography is quite detailed, including sections on cameras, lenses (lens laws, focal length, aperture and depth of field), exposure (shutters, aperture, sensors) and resolution. Next is an introduction to the physics of atmospheric clouds, focusing on instability and other lift mechanisms. The rest of the Guidebook revisits flow visualization techniques in more depth, organized by additive (dyes and particulate tracers) and refractive index methods, as applied to both liquid and gas flows.

The Guidebook can be accessed at https://www.flowvis.org/Flow%20Vis%20Guide/introduction-to-the-guidebook/ . The initial use in class this fall will be described.