Fundamental laboratory experiments will be performed to study the development of internal waves and the transition to turbulence in uniform sheared and stratitied flow. Techniques are developed by which both the velocity shear and the density gradients can be measured with sufficient accuracy to determine a significant range of Richardson numbers. These measurements will be used to investigate the details of internal wave breaking, and other mechanisms of instability, and also to test fundamental theoretical ideas developed by mathematicians and numerical modelers.
