U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Bay Model

Big fan of this thing. It's one of my favorite places to take friends who visit the Bay Area.

Something that's not mentioned in the article is that the building they occupy is a former warehouse of Marinship, a World War Ⅱ shipyard that made Liberty Ships and T2 oil tankers used to supply fuel in the Pacific Theater: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinship

For anyone who wants to see Marinship's full story in motion, here's my HEVC encode of '“Tanker” — 1942–1945 War Time History of Marinship Corporation' https://mega dot nz/file/lgtmlKIA#asrzuwGOxi6l8I5BmgyAxfKkm1zFcxvY4SYS1SxqtZk

See also Marin City, which is the remains of Marinship's on-site worker housing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marin_City,_California

If you don't know Tom Scott, he has done a great video 4mn vide on the model where you can see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i70wkxmumAw

It's a shame that there isn't a series of articles on such models --- saw the Chesapeake Bay model (mentioned in a footnote) on a field trip when I was much younger (and it was still in active use for research I believe, yes, as my kids constantly tell me, I'm old).

Simulation used to be essentially impossible, something one dreamed of, or had to pay for time on a Cray or similar supercomputer/cluster.

Apparently, the Chesapeake Bay model was built just as that was becoming feasible:

https://easternshorebrent.com/2017/11/30/doomed-progress-the...

and has since been dismantled and a business park built on the site.

The bay’s first LLM (large liquid model) was invented in the 1950s.

I highly recommend a visit. It’s only a beautiful ferry ride and nice walk along the waterfront away from San Francisco. A refreshingly retro and analog experience.

I haven't been there in awhile.

Back in the 90's the Autodesk tech office was next door to the Bay Model and we'd occasionally pop over for lunch and tour the place.

Great to see it still around and open to the public.

I’d gone here as a young child in school, and then went as part of a team building afternoon. Massive Deja Vu in front of all of my coworkers

John McPhee talks about a similar model for the Mississippi River in “The Control of Nature” Well worth a read. Fun stories about Hawaii and Los Angeles too, iirc.

This is neat to see. US army crops of engineers is a negative “word” to me after growing up in FL and they destroyed so many ecosystems. And the entire Everglades. They’re still at it now. My family has basically spent the past 30 years fighting a ware they put in on our natural creek. It killed the creek, it shrunk the flow to the size of the culvert.

So, It’s neat to see something competent! Imagine if they modeled what cutting off the natural draining to the Everglades would do :p

Took my son there when he was young (6?) and we all loved it. What a great day trip.

The distortion is interesting and something I didn’t realize the model included. I assume that it’s necessary because the effects of surface tension and the viscosity of water (and other effects?) change its behavior at this scale relative to the features of the model?

These are the kinds of interesting engineering challenges that were solved with human ingenuity and grit; I wish we were talking more about them to our youth to inspire imagination about what's possible.

This is a hidden gem in the Bay Area. Go check it out if you live near by.

Why do the Army Corps of Engineers get so involved in civil infrastructure in the US - thinking of the Mississippi in particular?

In other countries the government would be involved but it would be a civilian rather than military role

See also the Mississippi River Basin model built by German engineer POWs during WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_Basin_Model

The fellow who lived next door to me told me of a similar model system used to model Sydney Harbour which he worked on in the 1970s. IIRC it was instrumented with electronics and linked to a VAX or similar early machine.

Don’t show something good the government has done or the POTUS will cancel it!!!