An effective way of introducing students to this project is to make use of the matrix below. We’ve found it useful to ask the students to speculate on what might happen before they (or you) carry out the experiments. i.e. get them to make predictions by sketching with colored markers, what they expect to observe. For this purpose you can download a pdf of the matrix here.
Experiment 1 might seem trivial, but it provides a context to talk about how a tracer disperses in a fluid in the absence of advection (contrast with 2). Experiment 3 focuses on solid-body rotation, a concept that is not immediately obvious to students.
To help connect to the meteorological and oceanographic examples, ask students to estimate the Rossby number in Experiment 4.