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 …
Category Archives: Teaching
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 …
Mach Experiment
Paul Richard Heinrich Blasius
At Easter 1902 I had sat my final college examination, and was now studying mathematics. This was not simple for me: Although one can see what follows from certain algebraic manipulations, why would this be done? “By mathematics, you are convicted, instead of convinced”, according to the philosopher Schopenhauer. After some time, I realized that, …
On Teaching Philosophy
You asked me how should I best teach them. Should I teach them from the point of view of the history of science the applications? My theory is that the best way to teach is to have no philosophy. We must be chaotic and confuse them in the sense that you use every possible way …