Mechanisms of Instability in Rayleigh-bénard Convection

To my family.. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people whom I would like to acknowledge for their help and support as I made my way through this thesis work. Mike Schatz, my advisor, deserves much credit for the genesis of my research project. Mike's research model of each student being responsible for his or her experiment, the development of necessary computer programs, data acquisition and analysis, has helped me develop many valuable skills. Mike has always encouraged me to take advantage of speaking opportunities and has stressed the importance of being able to discuss research with a variety of audiences. This has proved to be invaluable advice to date, and, I expect, in the future. Mike was also very generous with his time and helpful comments about this thesis. Professor Roman Grigoriev provided insights on almost every occasion we spoke about research, as well as being one of the top teachers of my graduate classes. There were several other faculty members with whom I had many enjoyable interactions, notably Professors Ed Conrad, Phil First, and James Gole. I would also like to thank the committee members for suggesting ways in which to strengthen this thesis. I felt well prepared for graduate school by the wonderful physics faculty at the University of Northern Iowa. great advisors and teachers. Many of the friends I made at Georgia Tech were helpful in getting through the first year of classes, with Erin McGrath and Bill Knouse alternately playing the role of social organizer. Lee Miller was a close friend as well as a roommate. Daniel Borrero, Danny Caballero, Seungjoo Nah and Alex Wiener also became good friends and made showing up at school each day a little more fun. Danny and Daniel joined the Schatz lab at the same time as me; it was helpful to iv have others going through some of the research growing pains with me. Hüseyin Kur-tuldu, who became one of my closest friends, also worked on convection experiments and was a great help when it came to discussing research and general experimental issues, especially the myriad image processing obstacles that popped up. Several people were helpful in solving various research problems. Mike Sprinkle was kind enough to do the gold-plating of my servo mirrors on one of his clean room trips. Matt Cornick generously provided the state estimation code and hosted me for a visit to the University of …