Official description

The static, kinematic, and dynamic behaviours of fluids have huge import in physics, astrophysics engineering, earth sciences, and life sciences , and fluid mechanics is a basic scientific literacy in physics education. This course will introduce the fundamental physical principles and ways of thinking of fluid dynamics hand-in-hand with the development of problem solving skills applicable to different domains of fluid mechanics. The course will cover the physics and mathematics of kinematics and dynamics of fluids, including forces, fluxes and conservation laws. We will illustrate these concepts through a tremendous variety of phenomena that can be understood based on several relatively simple principles encapsulated in mathematical equations of fluid motion, starting with simple steady flows, vorticity, drag and lift, gravity and capillary waves, hydrodynamic instabilities such as Helmholtz instability in the atmosphere and Raleigh-Taylor instability in super-novae, and strange behavior of biological swimmers on the microscale.