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
The Bay Model building has a Marinship museum in a front room. 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
e: the Bay Model building is the big square one that is center-frame starting at 04:30 in the video, Marin City at 09:23, and some beginnings of modern-day international oil politics at 12:28.
by LucasLanglois
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- 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
by WillAdams
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- 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.
- 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.
by protocolture
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- Everyone knows that Hydraulic models aren't for bays, they are for the British economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Machine
- 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.
- 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?
by youngtaff
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- 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
- 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
- Took my son there when he was young (6?) and we all loved it. What a great day trip.
by contingencies
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- 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.
- This is a hidden gem in the Bay Area. Go check it out if you live near by.
by obvioustourist
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- See also the Mississippi River Basin model built by German engineer POWs during WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_River_Basin_Model
by taco_emoji
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- There's a similar model for the entire Great Lakes watershed at Discovery World in Milwaukee. You can even press a button to make it rain!
by bigbrained124
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- Did this use this to model operation sea-spray?
- 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
- Their models HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS are really great hydraulic models. Unfortunately, with Windows native interfaces...
by ThreatPortSec
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- good
by supertroop
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- Don’t show something good the government has done or the POTUS will cancel it!!!
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