vortex ring


noun
  1. a stable perturbation in a fluid that takes the form of a torus in which the flow rotates in the section of the torus so that the pressure difference between the inside and outside of the torus balances body forces. The best-known vortex ring is a smoke ring

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

How to use vortex ring in a sentence

  • He must will the imagined vortex-ring to move forward as if it were actually boring a tunnel through the atmosphere.

  • A vortex-ring produced in the air behaves in the most surprising manner.

    The Machinery of the Universe | Amos Emerson Dolbear
  • Such a vortex-ring is made by the smoker who purses his lips into a round hole and sends out a puff of smoke.

  • Now this is just what a vortex-ring would do in an incompressible frictionless fluid.

  • As though it is foolish to follow a vortex ring into a vacuum, and wise to whack at a dirty golf ball on a suburban railway bank.

    Marriage | H. G. Wells