Size-Dependence of Rotation Rates of Spheres and Disks in Turbulence

Abstract

My advisor Greg Voth and my lab mate Stefan Kramel deserve my first and foremost thanks. Professor Voth has been a role model and mentor for the last three and a half years. I am grateful to have worked with him for so long on such an interesting project, and without his bottomless reserves of insight, advice, and guidance I would now be a very different physicist and person. Stefan's tireless help with experimental and computational troubles have made possible every individual chapter of this thesis, and he deserves a great deal of thanks for setting aside his hundred other responsibilities to help me with my own. I would also like to singularly thank Guy Marcus, whose enthusiasm, dedication, and generosity have all influenced my own trajectory much more than he may know. I have benefitted a great deal from enlightening conversations with many of my fellow Voth Group lab members, including in particular Shima Parsa and Rui Ni in my early lab days and Conor Hunt, Lydia Tierney, Bardia Hejazi, and Michael Krellenstein more recently. This thesis is improved by each of their influences. For not banning me when I almost certainly crashed the cluster and for his help and patience in teaching me how to properly use it, I would also like to thank Henk Meij. I am very grateful for all of the faculty and staff in the physics department whom I have had the privilege of getting to know. I have spent five years in this department and I have never in that time regretted coming to Wesleyan and doing physics here. Leaving Wesleyan will be a great change in my life, in no small part because I will be leaving a department where I feel at home. My deepest and greatest thanks belong with my mom, my dad, and Ali. My parents molded the person I have become, and they have made many sacrifices to enable me to pursue the life I want to pursue. They taught their budding scientist to always be curious, iv and they are the reason I continue to love learning. Finally, Ali's generosity, empathy, and encouragement have been a continuous source of support as I prepare to close this chapter and begin a new one. Ali, for some absurd reason you keep saying that you want to read this entire thesis. I look forward to many a dispute over comma placement and split infinitives, and many an insightful question about the universe.