Water
A steep density gradient in a body of water can have the effect of trapping energy and preventing convection, such a gradient is employed in solar ponds. In the case of salt water, sharp gradients can lead to stratification of different concentrations of salinity. This is called a Halocline.
Read more about this topic: Density Gradient
Famous quotes containing the word water:
“—the main jet
Struggling aloft unti it seems at rest
In the act of rising, until
The very wish of water is reversed,”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“Why are a lady’s thighs always cool? That is, said the monk, due to three causes for which a place is always naturally cool: primo, because water runs all the way down it; secondo, because it is in a shady, dark and obscure place, where the sun never shines; and thirdly, because it is continually fanned by the winds from the breezy hole.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“The senseless drowned
Have faces nobody would care to see,
But water loves those gradual erasures
Of flesh and shoreline, greenery and glass,”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)