Bulletin of the American Physical Society
69th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics
Volume 61, Number 20
Sunday–Tuesday, November 20–22, 2016; Portland, Oregon
Session D9: Fluid Dynamics - Education, Outreach, and Diversity I |
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Chair: Frank Jacobitz, University of San Diego Room: B117 |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 2:57PM - 3:10PM |
D9.00001: Seeing Fluid Physics via Visual Expertise Training Jean Hertzberg, Katherine Goodman, Tim Curran In a course on Flow Visualization, students often expressed that their perception of fluid flows had increased, implying the acquisition of a type of visual expertise, akin to that of radiologists or dog show judges. In the first steps towards measuring this expertise, we emulated an experimental design from psychology. The study had two groups of participants: ``novices'' with no formal fluids education, and ``experts'' who had passed as least one fluid mechanics course. All participants were trained to place static images of fluid flows into two categories (laminar and turbulent). Half the participants were trained on flow images with a specific format (Von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n vortex streets), and the other half on a broader group. Novices' results were in line with past perceptual expertise studies, showing that it is easier to transfer learning from a broad category to a new specific format than vice versa. In contrast, experts did not have a significant difference between training conditions, suggesting the experts did not undergo the same learning process as the novices. We theorize that expert subjects were able to access their conceptual knowledge about fluids to perform this new, visual task. This finding supports new ways of understanding conceptual learning. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 3:10PM - 3:23PM |
D9.00002: Wooooooahhh! vs Aha!, is the choice obvious? Faraz Mehdi There has been a lot of focus towards attracting people, especially under-represented groups, to STEM fields. One of the ways to accomplish this is short demonstrations and workshops, where young students are exposed to ``exciting'' experiments in an effort to make STEM more appealing. We tried an alternative approach by making the students perform a deliberately ``boring'' experiment but one which made them think scientifically. This was tested on a small group of high school students during Girls Technology Day in New Hampshire. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 3:23PM - 3:36PM |
D9.00003: F*** Yeah Fluid Dynamics: Inside the science communication process Nicole Sharp Communicating scientific research to general audiences may seem daunting, but it does not have to be. For six years, fluid dynamics outreach blog FYFD has been sharing the community's scientific output with an audience of nearly a quarter of a million readers and viewers of all ages and backgrounds. This talk will focus on the process behind science communication and some of the steps and exercises that can help scientists communicate to broad audiences more effectively. Using examples from the FYFD blog and YouTube channel, the talk will illustrate this communication process in action. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 3:36PM - 3:49PM |
D9.00004: The Fluids RAP Ivaylo Nedyalkov After fifteen years of experience in rap, and ten in fluid mechanics, ``I am coming here with high-Reynolds-number stamina; I can beat these rap folks whose flows are... laminar.'' The rap relates fluid flows to rap flows. The fluid concepts presented in the song have varying complexity and the listeners/viewers will be encouraged to read the explanations on a site dedicated to the rap. The music video will provide an opportunity to share high-quality fluid visualizations with a general audience. This talk will present the rap lyrics, the vision for the video, and the strategy for outreach. Suggestions and comments will be welcomed. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 3:49PM - 4:02PM |
D9.00005: Attracting Students to Fluid Mechanics with Coffee William Ristenpart We describe a new class developed at U.C. Davis titled ``The Design of Coffee,'' which serves as a nonmathematical introduction to chemical engineering as illustrated by the process of roasting and brewing coffee. Hands-on coffee experiments demonstrate key engineering principles, including material balances, chemical kinetics, mass transfer, conservation of energy, and fluid mechanics. The experiments lead to an engineering design competition where students strive to make the best tasting coffee using the least amount of energy - a classic engineering optimization problem, but one that is both fun and tasty. ``The Design of Coffee'' started as a freshmen seminar in 2013, and it has exploded in popularity: it now serves 1,533 students per year, and is the largest and most popular elective course at U.C. Davis. In this talk we focus on the class pedagogy as applied to fluid mechanics, with an emphasis on how coffee serves as an engaging and exciting topic for teaching students about fluid mechanics in an approachable, hands-on manner. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 4:02PM - 4:15PM |
D9.00006: Creative Turbulence: Experiments in Art and Physics Enrico Fonda, R. Luke DuBois, Sara Camnasio, Maurizio Porfiri, Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, Daniel P. Lathrop, Daniel Serrano, Devesh Ranjan Effective communication of basic research to non-experts is necessary to inspire the public and to justify support for science by the taxpayers. The creative power of art is particularly important to engage an adult audience, who otherwise might not be receptive to standard didactic material. Interdisciplinarity defines new trends in research, and works at the intersection of art and science are growing in popularity, even though they are often isolated experiments. We present a public-facing collaboration between physicists/engineers performing research in fluid dynamics, and audiovisual artists working in cutting-edge media installation and performance. The result of this collaboration is a curated exhibition, with supporting public programming. We present the artworks, the lesson learned from the interactions between artists and scientists, the potential outreach impact and future developments. [Preview Abstract] |
Sunday, November 20, 2016 4:15PM - 4:28PM |
D9.00007: The making of a cavitation children’s book Marc Henry de Frahan, Brandon Patterson, Erika Lazar Engaging young children in science is particularly important to future scientific endeavors. From thunderstorms to the waterpark, children are constantly exposed to the wonders of fluid dynamics. Among fluid phenomena, bubbles have always fascinated children. Yet some of the most exciting aspects of bubbles, such as cavitation, are scarcely known to non-experts. To introduce cavitation to a five year old audience, we wrote “Brooke Bubble Breaks Things”, a children’s book about the adventures of a cavitation bubble learning about all the things she could break. In this talk, we discuss how a children’s book is made by walking through the steps involved in creating the book from concept to publication. We focus on strategies for successfully communicating a technical message while balancing entertainment and fidelity to nature. To provide parents, teachers, and young inquiring minds with a detailed explanation of the physics and applications of cavitation, we also created a website with detailed explanations, animations, and links to further information. We aim to convince the fluids community that writing picture books is an intellectually stimulating and fun way of communicating fluids principles and applications to children. [Preview Abstract] |
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