Fluid dynamics is a subject with a long history - a virtual parade of famous mathematicians have explored the subject. Yet, we continue to make discoveries and find applications to our everyday life. For example, we now have reliable 5-day weather forecasts and tornado warnings. Predictions of tides are applied to automated tsunami warnings and mathematical models of planetary flows are crucial for understanding climate change.

Many challenging fluid problems involve vorticity. On the small scale, one immediately thinks of turbulence, while vorticity on larger scales impact on the weather. For example, the so-called Rossby waves in the oceans are associated with a phenomenon known as "El Niño" which affects meteorological conditions in the Pacific Ocean. These waves are relevant for astrophysics, especially for neutron stars for which they are thought to be a detectable source of gravitation radiation.

We all know what water is - and we know that it can be a lot of "fun" - but as this exhibit demonstrates, we do not understand all aspects of it. We will provide simple hands-on demonstrations of fluid behaviour, demonstrating fluid instabilities and vortex dynamics - linking to interesting problems on many different scales.