Fluid Mechanics is a class that involves learning about the behavior of fluids and their interactions with solid surfaces and other fluids. You will find all of my work from this class here, including homeworks, tests, and test reflections.

Reflective Letter

I believe that I have developed a complete understanding of the idea of Fluid Mechanics. The way I went about learning this semester was with a new method of note taking. I recently got a new tablet for note taking which makes it far easier to color code things and organize my thoughts. I also do my test work on the tablet which is perfect for moving ideas around to make it easier digestible by the professor. Here are some things I learned from this year:

On the first test, I displayed my ability to describe the nature of fluids and define different fluid properties such as viscosity and pressure. The whole idea of the first test was to determine the pressure in a tank due to a given velocity and pipe length. I did this correctly. I also showed that I can compute pressure and the forces associated with a stagnant fluid on one of the first homeworks. There was no specific test on buoyancy, but there were homework problems on it as well that displayed my knowledge, as shown in the homework tab. The second test dealt with explaining the fluid dynamics in pipes and fittings, as well as applying Bernoulli’s equation to find friction losses in pipes. The third test represented all of my knowledge on series and parallel friction losses in pipes using Bernoulli’s with excel for the iteration method. Our last small project showed my knowledge on pumps and how to select the correct one in a system.

All of my learning is demonstrated in my homework and tests. I got better as the year went along on my test abilities in this class as I understood what the professor wanted more as time went along. I was most successful in my understanding of series and parallel pipes on the third test. My 98/100 represents that. I was extremely successful in my completion of both problems, and even found an error on the professor’s solutions (did not account for multiple tees or elbows in head losses). I am unsure if this course will benefit my career in the future as I have no idea if I will be in the world of fluid mechanics. I would like to work in the automotive industry, so it is certainly a possibility. I have yet been able to apply my knowledge in this class to other facets of my life such as work or other courses. I hope that I will in the future since I am comfortable with the material. I could use fluid mechanics to design someone’s pool cleaner piping system as a project in school or in the real world. I think that this information learned in this class is important, as there are many things in our lives that require the flow of a fluid to operate. If I was starting this class again, I would tell myself to practice more and spend more time outside of the classroom on the material. I wasted much of my time in the beginning of the semester and should have dedicated more of it to this class.

I have improved drastically as an engineer through this class and others this semester. I have had a better work ethic compared to years previously at ODU and that has translated well to my grades. This class helped me learn and fine tune my studying methods as well as my comprehension and note taking skills in class. Professor Ayala is a great teacher and is very interactive with the class. I find it easy to ask questions in this class especially. My biggest accomplishment in this course is my understanding of parallel pipeline systems and how to calculate for any variable unknown. I am completely confident in my ability to do this after taking this class. This, in turn, is a skill that I mastered in this course. I also mastered the ability to calculate energy losses and manipulate Bernoulli’s equation to find what I am looking for. This was shown by my Test 3 and the homeworks leading up to it. These are my strengths, but I had some weaknesses this semester in this class. I was a slow learner at learning how to calculate pressure via a manometer, which is shown on Test 1 question 1. I later was able to understand this concept better, but was never able to display that as there were no more questions referring to manometers the rest of the semester. I had absolutely no idea what Fluid Mechanics was about before taking this course. Now I know basically everything about it and feel completely comfortable answering a variety of questions related to this topic. This is because I was a good student this semester and stayed on top of my work while also asking the right questions in class.