Einstein Meandered

Via Three-toed Sloth, I find out that Titan has meandering rivers. Did you know that there is an emperical relationship between the width of a river and the wavelength of its meander? Einstein did and was one of the first to explain the reason for this relationship. I wonder if the meanders on Titan obey the same law?

3 Replies to “Einstein Meandered”

  1. 🙂 If I do end up touring the country in an rv, I’d go check out all the good locations for antecedent rivers and streams like the Delaware water gap. I think I take umbrage at the idea that I’d ever live in such a gas-guzzling monstrosity, though….

  2. oh geez, these are my favorite kinds of physics/science problems… seriously. Not that I have any special intuition for solving them, but they’re just fun to think about. This is making me reminisce about Tech now…

  3. It’s a little hard to tell but the article may be referring to Albert Einstein’s son Hans Albert Einstein. Hans Albert was famous in hydrology for his work with sediment transport. He was apparently a professor of Hydraulic Engineering at Berkeley. It seems more reasonable to think that it was Hans Albert, rather than his father, who was thinking about meandering rivers.

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