Below is a pre-amble to a new yahoo group I have started to discuss thermals. I would ask all interested gliding pilots to join in and learn, or teach.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thermal_truth/

Ok, we know the shapes, triggers, the sizes, the volumes, the heights, the strengths, the distances between thermals.
We speculate on rotation, blue holes, convergiences, moisture content, adiabatic lapse rates, height to spacing ratio's and a dozen other thing relating to thermals.
We have had countless thermal studies, used blipmaps, radars, sensors and test flights for nearly a hundred years.
But we base it all on the blind understanding that a thermal rises simply because it is hotter than the air around it, or, at best, less dense that the air around it.
This is not true.
We feel a wind gust on the airfield in the morning and we know the day has "started". Sure enough, a willy-willy or dust-devil appears, usually triggered by the activity on the grid, swirling off down-wind between the pie-cart and the tug/glider combination, or perhaps the winch and the glider.
We know a thermal bubble has just broken loose, the willy-willy is the under-current eddieing around below it in suction, the breeze filling the void that the thermal left behind.
This is not true.

We see a bubble in the water beside us as we rise in our scuba gear. The bubble has eddies below it, turbulence beside and below it. It has a smooth, rounded top and a flat bottom. This is true, however,it is not rising by itself, as all seem to think, it is being displaced by the water.
Thermals are no different or they would break Waynes Rule.

After years of racking my brain on this subject -my passion- and debating it with freinds, scientests, sceptics and expert alike, I cannot seem to make people understand what I see as the truth.

Perhaps I am mistaken, I welcome education from my peers in the gliding community. If I am not, many people in the world will benefit from this understanding, as the rules will probably apply to heating of just about everthing.

I am taking liberty calling the theory Waynes Rule, I apologise to the purists and the great scientists of the past whose work with gravity and mass I am borrowing the theory from, but for the discussion, its

Waynes Rule.

Wayne Carter
(bagger)