Education
Descriptions of the courses I teach and outreach activities I have organized.
Courses
CHEM-ENG 330: Fluid Mechanics (UMass-Amherst):
This course introduces the fundamentals and basic applications of fluid mechanics to juniors in chemical engineering. Fundamentals include kinematics; forces and stresses; derivation and application of differential and integral conservation equations for mass and momentum; boundary conditions; vorticity, potential, and rotational flow; unidirectional and nearly unidirectional flow; low Reynolds number flow; and high Reynolds number flow. Applications focus on systems of importance in chemical engineering. Mathematical modeling, computation, and solution techniques are emphasized.
MAE 103: Elementary Fluid Mechanics (UCLA):
This course introduces students (predominantly engineering) to fluid mechanics. Fluid mechanics is the study of both liquids and gases and, as such, covers a wide range of applications. More specifically, this class introduces the conservation laws describing both fluid statics and kinematics, and how to use them for specific problems with control volumes. These concepts are highly relevant for practicing engineers when designing any equipment that interacts with fluids (e.g. propulsion, pumps, airfoils, etc.). The goal is that by the end of this course, students will have a foundation in fluid mechanics that provides both intuition on how to approach fluid problems and the means to analytically solve said problems.
Outreach
Our group is involved in a wide range of outreach activities for students from K-12 all the way to first year undergraduates. In these activites we engage with a diverse pool students of students who otherwise might not consider pursuing degrees in science. It is extremely rewarding to introduce fluid mechanics to a general public who often knows little about the subject. For example, people are often shocked to find out that both gases and liquids are fluids. The figure below highlights some of these outreach activities.
At these events we have taught students through a wide range of fluid experiments including: rheoscopic flow visualization, vortex ring smoke visualization, Schlieren imaging, kinematic reversibility in Taylor-Couette flow, and a variety of rheological experiments. These experiments teach many important concepts in fluid dynamics. In the rheoscopic flow visualization experiment, we visualized flow using a rheoscopic fluid made of shaving cream and water in a fish tank. The students dragged different 3D-printed objects through the tank to show the different wake patterns, which highlighted what makes different shapes more or less aerodynamic. In the Schlieren imaging experiment, we show how to set up optics for visualizing density variations in a flow. These variations can be readily seen when heating air with a lighter or a blow-dryer. Furthermore, the laminar to turbulent transition exhibited over a lighter allows us to introduce concepts of flow stability. Lastly, we show a variety of simple rheological experiments to discuss the properties of density and viscosity in fluids.
