  The unsteady Micropolar Navier-Stokes Equations (MNSE) are a system of
parabolic partial differential equations coupling linear velocity and pressure
with angular velocity: material particles have both translational and
rotational degrees of freedom. We propose and analyze a first order
semi-implicit fully-discrete scheme for the MNSE, which decouples the
computation of the linear and angular velocities, is unconditionally stable and
delivers optimal convergence rates under assumptions analogous to those used
for the Navier-Stokes equations. With the help of our scheme we explore some
qualitative properties of the MNSE related to ferrofluid manipulation and
pumping. Finally, we propose a second order scheme and show that it is almost
unconditionally stable.
