Estudio de un oscilador de densidad mediante medidas de potencial eléctrico

Abstract

A density oscillator or saline oscillator is a nonlinear system. It presents alternating changes on the direction of time flow, as effect of the space restrictions between two flows of different densities. The fluids are contained in different vessels interconnected by a vertical capillary. In this work a density oscillator is constructed, and the oscillation is studied in function of some parameters. Those parameters are the concentration of the electrolyte salt (NaCl) and the length of the capillary tube. In order to measure the variation parameters effect, an aluminum electrode is placed in each solution and the electrical potential signal is registered with a digital multimeter. The variation of electrical potential allows us to observe how the flow direction evolves with time for the density oscillator. The analysis was made by interpretation of the electrical potential signal as function of time. We found phenomenological relationships between the oscillation period and the difference of the peak-to-peak potential in function of some experimental parameters, like: salt concentration and length of the capillary tube. Copyright by the Sociedade Brasileira de Física.