This is a large acrylic water tank I made for teaching and demonstration purposes. This is the brainchild of Prof. Mark Inall, and is primarily built to show the effect of tides on a two-layer ocean-fjord system.
Glueing the panels together turned out to be a surprisingly involved process as any flaw could precipitate a failure, and this thing holds a lot of water! It’s due for use on a course in April 2017, so I should hopefully have some images of it working soon.
(Edit) as promised, here is the tank in action during a SAMS Magical Mystery Tour which I organised a week or so back.
The tank is filled with saline water. It can simulate estuarine circulation by switching on an input of freshwater (left) which represents river discharge. A geared motor in the main body of the tank (right) can produce a reciprocal buoyancy input by raising and lowering a float, which can simulate strong or weak tides. Mark also had success with a bag of ice simulating a glacial fjord, which quickly set up an estuarine circulation driven purely by melting at the ice front.
Sam Jones 