I finally published my compressible flow notes online. They are under classes – comp. flow. They are the result of teaching the course over nine years at University of Florida. I compressed the file a bit to conserve my website bandwidth. Enjoy!
Category Archives: Teaching
Note on Early Medieval Universities, the Scholastic Method, and the Formation of Critical Thought
Early medieval universities formed a distinct intellectual system built around structure, discipline, and the controlled expansion of reasoning. These institutions emerged from cathedral schools and monastic centers and evolved into formal environments where knowledge was not only preserved but interrogated. Their core mechanism was the scholastic method, a systematic approach that treated ideas as analytical …
Olaf O. Storaasli
Recently I lost a friend, Olaf O. Storaasli, Ph.D., due to medical complications. I first met him through the NASA Langley Alumni Association after giving a lecture titled Life After Academics. Although we did not overlap during my time at NASA, we connected through shared experiences. Later, he and his wife visited Florida, and I …
Fall 2023
Who would have thought that 7 years go by so quickly at the University of Florida. This year I am teaching introduction to computational fluid dynamics. The last time I taught it was before COVID in the fall of 2020. I am working on a new design program for nozzles. I am basing it on …
Reflection on Twenty Years Since the Loss of Columbia
Graduate Student Garrison S. Osborne and Steven A. E. MillerUniversity of Florida Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Well before the loss of Columbia, the NASA Office of Technology Assessment wrote, “Shuttle reliability is uncertain, but has been estimated to range between 97 and 99 percent. If the Shuttle reliability is 98 percent, there would …
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On Large Language Models (AI) and Aerospace Education
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing all aspects of our lives, much like the internet did when it became widely available to consumers in the mid-1990s. There are many discussions about how the AI revolution has affected different areas, including the workplace, art, culture, writing, and academics. Recently, the “ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue” has …
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A Note on Critical Thinking
Miller, S. A. E., “Note on Critical Thinking,” NASA Alumni Association Magazine, Dec., 2022. pp 5. (one-page) One might visit any leading university campus in the United States and ask the graduate faculty training future researchers one question, “what is the purpose of educating students?” One of the most frequent answers is to create critical …
Spring 2023 Semester
It’s the start of a new semester, and I’m excited to welcome a new group of students to the Theoretical Fluid Dynamics and Turbulence Group. This semester, we have a diverse group of students working on a range of interesting projects. Christian King, who joined us in May 2021 as a Ph.D. student, is studying …
APS Presentation – A New Course: Modeling Inhomogeneous Turbulence with a Historic Perspective
Abstract: A new graduate class is developed at the University of Florida called Modeling Inhomogeneous Turbulence with a Historical Perspective. The course covers in-depth concepts of the science and mathematics of turbulence modeling. Major topics of the class include statistics for modeling, the Russian school, law of the wall, chaos, compressible Navier-Stokes equations, mean kinetic …