Intro

I'm Alex Poelstra, a senior at BASIS Tucson North. My project attempts to model the turbulent flow in Crookes Radiometers to better predict their steady state, with the eventual goal of a large scale, energy harnessing model.
Crookes Radiometers, or Light Mills, are turbines that run off radiative heating. They consist of a spindle with a four-vaned rotor in a partially evacuated bulb, which rotates due to the diffusion of gas particles from the cold to hot edges.
Because the chamber is in a partial vacuum, it has a high Knudsen number, meaning particles particles will travel relatively far between collisions. This means the analysis must rely on statistical methods to simulate the system's motion rather than continuum mechanics.
My research is taking place at the U of A Physics and Atmospheric Science building, in Dr Manne's lab.The entirety of my proposal is available here.