How do you explain CFD to your girlfriend or boyfriend

diamondx · April 17, 2012, 15:59

do you often talk about meshing and calculation to your partner at home. how can you explain what you do or purpose of CFD. I always take for example my heater in the room and the windows with both having velocity with different temperature and i would like to investigate the final temperature in the room. can someone bring up something easier than this...

rwryne · April 17, 2012, 16:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by diamondx

do you often talk about meshing and calculation to your partner at home. how can you explain what you do or purpose of CFD. I always take for example my heater in the room and the windows with both having velocity with different temperature and i would like to investigate the final temperature in the room. can someone bring up something easier than this...

Easy....marry another engineer!

LuckyTran · April 23, 2012, 16:03

Quote:

Originally Posted by rwryne

Easy....marry another engineer!

I still have difficulty explaining it to other engineers. Actually it's probably harder to explain it to another engineering that thinks they know what's going on but doesn't than to explain it to a total stranger.

DeepElm · April 25, 2012, 00:38

Quote:

Originally Posted by diamondx

do you often talk about meshing and calculation to your partner at home. how can you explain what you do or purpose of CFD. I always take for example my heater in the room and the windows with both having velocity with different temperature and i would like to investigate the final temperature in the room. can someone bring up something easier than this...

Use examples that they can relate to. If you are near a river, talk about the fluid dynamics and rivers. If it is cloudy, relate the discussion to convection and clouds. Put it in simple terms.

jola · June 7, 2012, 04:07

Explaining daily CFD problems is difficult. I'm talking about things like convergence problems, problems to mesh a dirty STL geometry etc. However, explaining fluid dynamics problems is more easy, and in my view also more fun to talk about. After having explained and perhaps even demonstrated a fluid dynamics problem I'm just happy to say that my CFD work is to use a computer to simulate that kind of phenomena. My wife is working with accounting, but we can still share fun discussions about fluid dynamics problems. I don't think we have ever discussed convergence problems, checker-board effects or something more numerical though.

I recently discovered a very nice video-blog on tumbler. You can find a lot of nice videos of fluid dynamics there that can give you ideas about things to show your wife (or your kid if you have kids). You can find the blog in CFD Online's Blog feeds here: http://www.cfd-online.com/Feeds/blogs.php#top11

Far · June 7, 2012, 06:38

Quote:

Easy....marry another engineer!

Or may be if you keep on just talking about fluid dynamics

(without any practical example

) , may be she/he already started to look for another engineer

Rami · July 23, 2012, 04:09

I mostly agree with Jonas. Many years ago I volunteered to give a lesson on solar energy development to one of my daughter's elementary school class. I tried to think what do they know from their own experience (e.g., dazzling other kids with a mirror, which my daughter made a caricature slide of), showed some hardware parts, explained electricity generation by the familiar bicycle-dynamo and so on. Judging from their interest, intelligent questions and participation - they fully understood me. So, yes - if you mention daily-life fluid dynamics phenomena and then explain it is simulated on a computer by keeping "budget balances" of mass, energy and (the less familiar) momentum in each small domain (cell or element) - it is easily understood by anyone that had not lost curiosity.

April 17, 2012, 15:59	How do you explain CFD to your girlfriend or boyfriend	#1
diamondx Super Moderator Ghazlani M. Ali Join Date: May 2011 Location: Tokyo, Japan Posts: 1,385 Blog Entries: 23 Rep Power: 29	do you often talk about meshing and calculation to your partner at home. how can you explain what you do or purpose of CFD. I always take for example my heater in the room and the windows with both having velocity with different temperature and i would like to investigate the final temperature in the room. can someone bring up something easier than this... Torque_Converter likes this. __________________ Regards, New to ICEM CFD, try this document --> https://goo.gl/KAOIwm Ali

June 7, 2012, 04:07	Show fun fluid dynamics problems	#5
jola Administrator Jonas Larsson Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: Gothenburg, Sweden Posts: 825 Rep Power: 10	Explaining daily CFD problems is difficult. I'm talking about things like convergence problems, problems to mesh a dirty STL geometry etc. However, explaining fluid dynamics problems is more easy, and in my view also more fun to talk about. After having explained and perhaps even demonstrated a fluid dynamics problem I'm just happy to say that my CFD work is to use a computer to simulate that kind of phenomena. My wife is working with accounting, but we can still share fun discussions about fluid dynamics problems. I don't think we have ever discussed convergence problems, checker-board effects or something more numerical though. I recently discovered a very nice video-blog on tumbler. You can find a lot of nice videos of fluid dynamics there that can give you ideas about things to show your wife (or your kid if you have kids). You can find the blog in CFD Online's Blog feeds here: http://www.cfd-online.com/Feeds/blogs.php#top11 aero_head likes this.

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July 23, 2012, 04:09		#7
Rami Senior Member Rami Ben-Zvi Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 155 Rep Power: 17	I mostly agree with Jonas. Many years ago I volunteered to give a lesson on solar energy development to one of my daughter's elementary school class. I tried to think what do they know from their own experience (e.g., dazzling other kids with a mirror, which my daughter made a caricature slide of), showed some hardware parts, explained electricity generation by the familiar bicycle-dynamo and so on. Judging from their interest, intelligent questions and participation - they fully understood me. So, yes - if you mention daily-life fluid dynamics phenomena and then explain it is simulated on a computer by keeping "budget balances" of mass, energy and (the less familiar) momentum in each small domain (cell or element) - it is easily understood by anyone that had not lost curiosity.