astronomy

Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory

Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory rather than just read about it. In short: The Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory (former name: Saint Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory), or SAFL, is a research laboratory situated on Hennepin Island in the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Its primary research is in "Engineering, Environmental, Biological, and Geophysical Fluid Mechanics".

Key takeaways

Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory (former name: Saint Anthony Falls Hydraulic Laboratory), or SAFL, is a research laboratory situated on Hennepin Island in the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Its primary research is in "Engineering, Environmental, Biological, and Geophysical Fluid Mechanics". It is affiliated with the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering. Research is conducted by graduate students and faculty alike using the 16,000 square feet of research space and 24 different specialized facilities. The laboratory is unique in that its location next to Saint Anthony Falls allows it to use the hydraulic head from the waterfall to provide water for many of the experiments. The experiments performed at the laboratory are varied, and may include:

Contract civil and environmental engineering work, such as dam construction and removal Understanding river system dynamics Work with oil exploration to characterize deposits in deltaic systems Work to understand the interactions between fluid flow and the ecology of rivers Work to understand cavitation in fluids in order to build better propellers The Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory is also the headquarters of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics, a National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. The laboratory is a contributing resource of the Saint Anthony Falls Historic District which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

History SAFL was designed and built in the 1930s with funding provided by the Works Progress Administration and was headed by Lorenz G. Straub until his death in 1963. Construction began in March, 1936 and the Lab was opened and dedicated in November, 1938. At first, SAFL focused on hydraulic and engineering research, but after Straub's death the Lab began to expand its research to broader focuses such as stratified flows, turbulence and hydrology. An atmospheric layer wind tunnel and multiple flumes were also added to the collection of research facilities. This was made possible through funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). From 1977 through 1993, the Laboratory emphasized the integration of education and basic and applied research. Several new faculty were appointed to bring new research efforts to SAFL like computational fluid dynamics, water resources and energy, environmental water research, naval hydrodynamics, cavitation, wind engineering, small hydropower development, rainfall modeling, and geomorphology to name a few. The NSF made SAFL the headquarters of the National Center of Earth-Surface Dynamics (NCED) in 2002, a center devoted to greater predictive earth surface technology and research. In 2006, the University of Minnesota and St. Anthony Falls Laboratory implemented a wind-energy research consortium, called EOLOS, which brought together academic partners, industry, and government laboratories with help of a grant from the Department of Energy. This new facility located just south of Minneapolis brought SAFL more into the world of renewable energy research with the addition of a wind turbine among other things. Since then, SAFL has become an internationally renown leader in the study of earth surface and fluid dynamics. Multiple new facilities have been added over the years to expand research capabilities and many have actually been created by the staff and are exclusively used by SAFL researchers. Funding for SAFL's expansions has come throughout the years from a number of outside sources like NASA, NSF, U.S. Navy, Department of Energy, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Hamburg Ship Model Basin, the Legislative-Citizen Commission for Minnesota Resources, and many more. The St. Anthony Falls Laboratory was added as a research facility to the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering in 2011.

Research programs Research at SAFL includes the work of many fields, including civil engineering, hydraulic engineering, hydrology, ecology, and geology. Research at SAFL has been spurred on in the first decade of the 21st century by its status as the headquarters of the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED) Analog material models of fluvial and depositional systems are employed by geologists at SAFL to understand the causes of river channel morphologies and dynamics, as well as to reconstruct the history of events that produces particular stratigraphic packages. Researchers working on channel morphology have shown the importance of vegetation in restricting braided channels to a single thread (and often sinuous) system. Research done on experimental alluvial fan deltas has highlighted the statistics of flow occupation and their potential hazard to life and property, shown autogenic cyclicity in patterns of sediment storage and release that determine short-term shoreline positions, and has been connected to sequence stratigraphy and the processes that form the stratigraphic record. Research at SAFL is primarily concentrated in four major areas:

Earth surface, water, and life Mitigating impacts of global environmental change Renewable energy systems Biomedical fluid mechanics for personalized health care

Earth surface, water, and life research SAFL became involved with NCED in 2002, an NSF Science and Technology center that focuses on developing an integrated, quantitative approach to predicting the evolution of Earth's surface. It concentrates on a full range of critical disciplines such as engineering, Earth science, biology, mathematics, physics, and social sciences. Now SAFL is a part of NCED2, a grant that supports the continuation of the research synthesis postdoctoral and outreach programs created by NCED. At present, SAFL's Earth surface research revolves around the following interlinked themes:

Multi-scale virtual aquatic environments Interplay of fluid flow, microorganism physiology, and biogeochemistry Particles, bubbles, and other multi-phase flows Deltas and depositional systems River networks as corridors of environmental change SAFL's long-term research vision is to "develop an interconnected system of theoretical and computational models, supported by data streams from the living surface environment, that can provide testable, adaptive predictions for scenarios ranging from environmental restoration and natural hazard mitigation to changes in precipitation to global sea-level rise."

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory

In research: Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1938 establishments in Minnesota, Hydraulic laboratories, Organizations based in Minneapolis, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory in simple terms?

Why does Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory.