rather interesting simulation

[bikeman564™]

 

[MickinMD ★]

Cool!

We had a similar model of the Chesapeake Bay, but it didn't answer enough questions whose answers weren't already figured out and computer simulations were becoming more accurate and cheaper. According to a website:

THE CHESAPEAKE BAY HYDRAULIC MODEL, the largest indoor hydraulics model in the world, which is now abandoned and decaying, was the subject of an installation prepared by the CLUI. The exhibit, Model of Decay, was on display at The Center's Los Angeles exhibit hall, from March 20 to April 30, 1998, and featured photographs of the model as it appears today in its abandoned and degraded state.

The Chesapeake Bay Hydraulic Model was constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers in the late 1970's, to model the fluid dynamics of the Chesapeake Bay, one of the most complex estuaries in the country.

The Model opened in 1978, and operated for only three years, before high operating costs and technical problems forced its closure. It has been abandoned ever since, and is about to be destroyed.The eight-acre model surface, sculpted by hand in cement, was a 1:1,000 scale analog of the actual bay, and its river tributaries, up to the head of tide. Water entered the model at measured rates from inflow stations at the head of nine miniature rivers, and salt water, with exactly controlled salinity levels, flowed into a simulated Atlantic Ocean headbay, at tidal heights that could be adjusted on demand.

The main reason for closing the model was emerging computer technologies. Though conceived in the 1960’s, more than a decade would pass before the model was built, by which time computer-based mathematical models were coming into use. In 1981, after around $30 million had been spent on the project, and after only a few years of intermittent use, the model was shut down, and abandoned.

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

Boy, wouldn't it be a shame if somebody dumped a few boxes of laundry soap into the pumps as they cycled the water in and out that model of San Francisco Bay?