Instructor

Prof. Arunkumar Sridharan

Section(S1/S2) and criteria used to allot sections

S2 (based on ASC and seniors’ advice)

Semester

Autumn ‘19

Course Difficulty

Moderate

Time commitment required

Attend classes regularly and the tutorial sessions, outside of that 2 hours a week is sufficient

Attendance Policy

My section had no attendance policy.

Grading Policy and Statistics

Grading was extremely student friendly: AA-34 AB-33 AP-1 BB-38 BC-24 CC-13 CD-9 DD-7 FR-10 Total: 169

Prerequisites (also if any skill/knowledge that would be a plus)

Basic calculus (MA105) and basic differential equations (JEE level)

Evaluation Scheme

(4 quizzes, 5% each), (tutorials, 10% overall), (midsem, 25%), (endsem, 45%)

Course Contents ( in brief)

Fluid statics (pressure on a liquid at a depth, force on a substance due to the weight of the fluid) Fluid dynamics (Reynolds Transport Theorem, Navier-Stokes equations, boundary value problems, friction and drag)

Mechanism of Instruction and Teaching Style

Although the teaching was mostly done on the blackboard, the prof used slides for reference and later shared those slides with us. However, making notes while class was going on proved to be more useful because the order in which the content was covered in class slightly varied from the order of the slides.

Feedback on Tutorials/Assignments/Projects etc

The tutorial sessions were taken by the prof himself. He would help us set up the problem and give some hints if required, however we were supposed to carry forward the rest of the problems. Initially, they were quite calculation intensive but sir encouraged discussion and answered our doubts very well, whenever required. A few problems had to be done on spot and submitted, while the rest of the problems were for practice.

Feedback on Exams

The quizzes were entirely conceptual- with minimal calculation based questions. Most of the quizzes involved theoretical questions (definitions, proofs, true and false). As far as the midsem was concerned, it was lengthy so a lot of people did not have the time to go back and check their answers. More emphasis was given to numerical based questions and they carried a lot of marks (each question was around 7+ marks each and the total marks was 60). For the endsem, the total marks were 100 of which around 20 were theoretical questions and the rest were numericals (which had to be done in the question paper itself). The grading was fairly lenient and the prof personally checked all the papers and took up our cribs. Marks heavily depended on the steps used to solve the questions so, even if the final answer was wrong, we would get more than half the marks.

Importance of course

A lot of people I know developed an interest in the field of fluids after the course. Many students started taking up projects in the field. Topics like CFD (computational fluid dynamics), two phase flows and advanced fluid dynamics have this course as a prerequisite.

References Used

Fundamentals of Fluid mechanics: Munson and Donald Fluid Mechanics: White

Anything else you would like to add

The professor ensured that everyone understood the concept. This was a common favourite amongst students in the third semester. Contrary to popular belief, it was not as daunting as people made it seem. It was for 8 credits, so it was heavy, but if one paid attention in class then they could easily understand the concepts.

Review by: Bhavini Jeloka