Multimedia Fluid Mechanics - Multilingual Version CD-ROM [CD-ROM]

G. M. Homsy (Author), H. Aref (Author), K. S. Breuer (Author), S. Hochgreb (Author), J. R. Koseff (Author), B. R. Munson (Author), K. G. Powell (Author), C. R. Robertson (Author), S. T. Thoroddsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 12, 2004

This CD-ROM offers an interactive tool for teaching undergraduate fluid mechanics. It features experiments that demonstrate fluid mechanical phenomena, animations of important principles and concepts, virtual laboratories in which students acquire data from the images, interactive computational exercises in which parameters can be varied, and other descriptive and illuminating material on applications. The material may be accessed randomly through a hyperlinked text, a search engine, a video library, and a glossary of terms. The new edition has been thoroughly updated and includes versions in English, Spanish and French.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Homsy and his colleagues have now provided us with a new and powerful teaching aid...This CD is an ambitious project, and, in my view, it has been accomplished with remarkable success...I have no doubt that this CD-ROM should be regarded as a 'set text' for viscous fluid mechanics courses at the undergraduate or starting graduate levels." Journal of Fluid Mechanics

"It is impossible to do justice in a short review to the range of video clips available...A student could learn a lot from browsing through the material on his or her own PC... Overall I liked the CD very much indeed, and at the price it represents excellent value. It should be snapped up immediately by university lecturers, students and school Physics departments." Mathematical Gazette

"...a very useful addition to standard fluid mechanics courses for undergraduate students." Zentralblatt fur Mathematik

Book Description

Multimedia Fluid Mechanics broke new ground by providing a cross-platform, interactive, visual resource, of use and appeal to students and professional alike. The revised issue takes advantage of developments in technology to broaden the appeal by including, on one disk, versions in English, Spanish and French.

Product Details

• CD-ROM
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (July 12, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521604761
• ISBN-13: 978-0521604765
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,181,001 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Dull, text heavy, lightweight, and a real memory hog - not recommended, October 14, 2006

By 

Liz (Los Altos, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Multimedia Fluid Mechanics - Multilingual Version CD-ROM (CD-ROM)

I purchased this CD-ROM to support my studies in an undergraduate upper division fluid dynamics class. What a disappointment and exercise in frustration.

The multimedia aspects are thin and overwhelmed by text. Picture a 2-D coordinate system with an animated particle moving along a simple curve....this animation repeats over and over. In the 60 mins. I spent going thru the CD-ROM I encountered no sound, no speech. The interface consists of tabbed or sequencial windows loaded with textbook type and simple illustrations or 6 second clips of fluid flow.

The disc covers only basic concepts. Granted, I didn't finish the CD-ROM but where's the Reynold's Transport Theorem, etc.? They present the Navier-Stokes equation but say much less than I've read in my textbook.

This multimedia disc is about 10% of what it could be.

On top of this, the disc is a real memoy hog and does not run smoothly. The readme file owns up to this and advises users to quit all other programs while running it. I use a Powerbook with a G4 processor and 2 Gb of RAM, but the program still ran slow and jerky and the movie clips stuttered. The stated Mac requirements for this CD-ROM are a G3 and 64 MB of RAM. Huh? Good luck!

Don't believe the stellar reviews on the back cover. This disc is dull.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I found this CD-ROM excellent in helping me understand this difficult subject, June 1, 2007

By 

Odysseus "DCH" (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Multimedia Fluid Mechanics - Multilingual Version CD-ROM (CD-ROM)

Fluid mechanics is a notoriously difficult subject and unless you are blessed with a highly gifted teacher, then it is likely that you will have trouble visualising some of the concepts. Equations on the page are sometimes just not enough to convey the dynamics of what is going on with some concepts.

This CD-ROM does a superb job of making plain some of the core theorems and equations. For example the section on the stream function is alone worth the price of this CD-ROM, since it explains beautifully why the equation is defined in the way that it is, and shows a video of a flow which illustrates the concept.

Some of the comments in the other reviews have some validity - the content could have been 10 times greater, because Fluids is a *massive* subject, but then the price would have been 10 times greater (and I would pay for it! Now there's a gauntlet!) I don't find any of the animations dull - after all, this isn't entertainment, this is education of basic principles. Perhaps these people find algebra dull too?

Also I had no problems playing the animations. They were a little slow whilst loading but once loaded they were fine.

Also when people award one star, what are they comparing it against? It's not really fair to compare with source on the Internet, as some people don't have masses of time to search or the proper bandwidth for it - some people just need all of the information in one place. Now, to my knowledge, this CD-ROM is unique - there is nothing like it. Please correct me if I'm wrong!

I would give this five stars, if there were some lectures on this CD-ROM, which I would have thought been trivial to include. There's nothing quite like a human talking in front of a blackboard to convey some kind of passion for a subject.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars i was disappointed, April 1, 2007

By 

anonimus (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Multimedia Fluid Mechanics - Multilingual Version CD-ROM (CD-ROM)

after attending some lectures in which movies and simple demonstrations of fluid motions were used creatively, i thought by owning this CDROM i would have in my collections some interesting pictures and movies of fluid dynamics. instead i found that the materials were unbelievably trivial and boring. don't believe me? buy it or loan it from a library and see for yourself.

you can find much much better fluid galleries on the web. unfortunately amazon doesn't let me insert links. try google 'physics of fluids andrews aopp' and 'GFD lab rhines university of washington' and find the links from there.