It is now official: I have an advisor. He is Australian. He is an experimentalist and works in turbulence. 
One more lecture left in the semester. Happy Hour later today. Life is good.
Monthly Archive for November, 2006
To answer the question some of you may have been asking: yes, I am still alive. It’s the end of the semester here at Cornell, which basically means that the end is nearby but I’ve got too much to do to appreciate it. This does not explain why I’m sitting at my desk typing a blog entry, though. The fact that I can’t convince myself to pull out my TAM homework explains that one. So here’s a brief look at my past month:
- Work, work, work, work, work.
- I’ve had a couple of encounters with my advisor-to-be, and those, on the whole, have turned out well. My feeling on this is corroborated by the fact that I got an e-mail from my advisor at Case saying that he ran into my new advisor at a conference last week and he had good things to say about me already. So, not all of my classes may be going the way I’d like, but I am still making a good impression around here.
- Earlier this month, I worked like mad to code, test, and write a report up on a computational fluid dynamics problem for one of my classes. Today I got the report back with an A+ on it. I didn’t know they still gave those in graduate school, but, boy, does it feel nice, coming, as it does, at a time where I’m seriously worrying about my performance in my other courses. It’s like getting a pat on the back and having someone tell me that, yes, you do still belong here.
- B came to NY and spent nearly a week with me last week. In our time in Ithaca, I showed her around town some but especially around Cornell. She got to experience walking around in a snowstorm as well as a chimes concert in McGraw Tower. We visited a winery up the road, and I fed her her first ever brownies and her first pizza in thirteen years. All in all, I felt pretty good about my hosting while she was up here in NY. Then I shuffled her into my car and drove 11 hours south so that she could spend Thanksgiving Day with me and my family. Her final conclusion was that Thanksgiving dinner was a lot like Christmas dinner but with better desserts. Unfortunately, we had to sacrifice showing her Black Friday sales for sleep before I drove her to the airport. I really enjoyed having her here.
- The unfortunate thing about living in a small town 630 miles from one’s family is that the 22 hours of driving necessary for the round trip cut into the amount of time one gets to spend with one’s family. I was really sorry to have to leave when I did on Saturday, and I’m quite looking forward to having a chance to see my parents and sister for longer once exams are over.
- Aside from work and travel and visitors, the other big reason I’ve not been as visible online in the last month is that I now have a boyfriend with whom I spend a fair amount of my free time. The best way to sum up that state of affairs is with a goofy-looking grin.
Procrastination has led me to various topics on Wikipedia, many of which have something to do with turbulence, which will, arguably, be the driving factor for the next five years of my life as I do my PhD research in that field. All panicky and stressful thoughts on such things aside, here are a few of my discoveries:
- Included in Science Magazine’s description of the Clay Mathematics Institute’s Millennium Problems (which, for you CS-types, includes P vs. NP) is the following:
Will mathematicians unleash the power of the Navier-Stokes equations? First written down in the 1840s, the equations hold the keys to understanding both smooth and turbulent flow. To harness them, though, theorists must find out exactly when they work and under what conditions they break down.
Sadly, no one told the reporter who wrote this (or the mathematicians that he/she may have spoken to) that scientists and engineers know exactly when the Navier-Stokes equations work–it’s something that every student learns as he/she learns to derive them. The more serious issue, which CMI picked up on, is that there is no general solution to the equations. Basically, the few flows that have been solved are possible only through approximation or gross oversimplification of the issue. Yes, I too ask why I set myself up for these things.
- A couple of famous scientists have had very similar turbulence-related stories attributed to them. I’m rather amused by this one:
A similar witticism has been attributed to Horace Lamb (who had published a noted text book on Hydrodynamics)—his choice being quantum mechanics (instead of relativity) and turbulence. Lamb was quoted as saying in a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, “I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.” #
- Earlier this semester one of my professors spent nearly an entire lecture discussing the brilliance of Lewis F. Richardson in terms of applying a finite differences approach to the solution of partial differential equations–thereby making numerical computation of solutions possible. Oddly enough, his famous first paper in that area is not at all mentioned on Wikipedia, though a later paper (from 1922) on numerical processing of differential equations in the field of meteorology is featured. #
- Being a pacifist, Richardson also, interestingly, applied his mathematical knowledge to international conflicts, creating mathematical models to describe armament of two nations and their likelihood to go to war based on the length of their mutual border. #
- He also wrote a great little rhyme about turbulence that I had to write up on my whiteboard:
Big whorls have little whorls that feed on their velocity,
and little whorls have smaller whorls and so on to viscosity. #Priceless!
- In the I-need-to-remember-that-one-later category, the German word for fluid mechanics is Strömungsmechanik, and I was right about the German term for a Von Karman vortex street being Wirbelstraße. I win.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled lives.
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