Why Injecting Fine Dust into a Tornado Is More Promising Than Injecting Coarse Dust: A Geometric Explanation

One of the promising ways to tame a tornado is to inject dust into it. Somewhat counter-intuitively, injecting coarse dust only makes the tornado stronger, while injecting fine dust can indeed help in the taming. This difference has been explained by a mathematical analysis of the corresponding equations, but (in contrast to the usual physics practice) this mathematical analysis has not yet been accompanied by a simple qualitative physical explanation. We show that such a simple explanation can be obtained if we analyze the problem of taming tornados from the geometric viewpoint. 1 Formulation of the Problem How to tame a tornado: an idea. Blades in an empty blender rotate very fast. However, when we place some material into the blender, the blades slow down. The more material we place in a blender, the more the blades slow down. This known phenomenon leads to a natural idea that maybe we can slow down rotations in a tornado if we inject substance into it. In general, this idea does not work well. An injection of heavy coarse material into a simulated flow has been tried; unfortunately, it turns out that