Good class, good professor, challenging exams.

The exams are nothing like the homework, and in my opinion, they do not accurately reflect learning—they measure how good you are at solving a problem you've never seen before (using what you've learned). As an analogy, the homework and lectures are like high school physics, everything is in the textbook; while the exams are like physics olympiads, you've never seen this before and it'll likely take creativity to solve it. I can somewhat sympathize with this method of administering exams—I suppose I'm spoiled by being spoonfed by high school and textbook problems. I wish Dr. Kavehpour would direct us to resources that more accurately reflect the challenges on the exams.

DISCLAIMER: This was online during COVID-19

Professor Kavehpour is one of the best professors I have had. This was online, and he made it feel much more personal than you would get in an in person lecture hall. He took advantage of online learning better than any other professor I had this quarter. He made us feel welcome and taught us everything we needed to know. He made jokes that helped to ease stress about the environment. His grading scheme was a bit tough (25% each midterm, 50% for the final) but his exams were very fair and short enough that they weren't a pain to try to do. REMEMBER COORDINATE SYSTEMS AND CONTROL VOLUMES ON THE EXAMS because some people didn't despite his warnings and they received lower scores because of it. This class was very fun in the online format, and in person I assume its the same. He's a very personable guy. 10/10 would take this class again even if it was in person

he's a nice guy and pretty good at explaining topics.

This class has 8 questions. Each is worth 50 points. Two on the first midterm, two on the second midterm, and 4 on the final. And that's the class! There is the added caveat that if you score above a 90 on the final you automatically get an A regardless of midterm grades. But the midterms are far easier than the final, so lock in early and coast. Exams are open-note, open-book, and you can even download the homework solutions to your device - except you absolutely need the textbook to look up formulas, table values, and curves/graphs. THIS IS A CLASS WHERE BUYING AN IPAD IS WORTH IT. Sitting in a shitty lecture hall desk for exams was a pain, and I couldn't imagine having to rifle through a physical textbook to find it. You can have the textbook open on your laptop, but the logistics of juggling your exam, device, and calculator make it all a little tight to add a thick book on top of it all. There are homework assignments, but they aren't graded. Instead, they're a selection of textbook problems that give you practice with the formula and methods. Worked out solutions are available for these as well.

Kavehpour himself is mildly terrifying. He has an extremely strict no phone policy, and he'll ask you to either explain why you're on your phone during his class or ask you to leave. He also will interrupt your questions with your peers or ask what you're typing - basically if you're doing anything other than silently and attentively taking notes, he'll get mad at you. On the positive side, he does "phone breaks" - if he wraps up a derivation, he'll give you 2 minutes to use your phone and talk (as well as the obligatory 5-10 minute break halfway through the lecture). He also starts class 10 minutes after the hour, so getting to class shouldn't be an issue. Outside of his character and quirks, he's pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a MIT grad.

The lectures for this class can be somewhat overwhelming. It is extremely math heavy, and hinges on your understanding of multivariable calculus. Vectors and vector calculus are critical for modeling how fluids move and behave, and if you want to follow along in lecture it really helps to remember the del operator, flux integrals, partial derivatives, chain rule, etc. Thankfully, none of the actual calculus appears on exams, it's just helpful if you want to understand the formulas you're copying down. In terms of exams, some problems can be solved in less than 5 minutes as long as you know which formulas to use. Control volumes are the bulk of this class, and as long as you make sure to state your assumptions, define your axes, normal vectors, and draw the control volume, you should be good. The last 2 concepts are pipe flow and compressible (gas) flow, and they're more tedious. Having a TI - Nspire or other calculator that can solve algebraic equations makes things a whole lot easier, but in general these types of problems are a bit more computational rather than a lot of theory and a quick plug and chug the way the beginning of the course is. A strong foundation in physics and a conceptual understanding of what's happening makes a big difference when you're identifying the areas of jets, calculating mass flow rates, and doing any of the other fun calculations that appear in this class.

The bottom line is, fluid dynamics are pretty cool and Kavehpour makes this class unique but mostly pleasant. He'll tell you exactly what's going to be on the exams, so just do exactly that and you should be in the clear. Even if you're not going on to MAE 150A or anything else fluids, it's a cool class and the things you learn are worth the effort.

Professor Kavehpour can come off as intimidating as he doesn't allow phones in class and will usually not tolerate disruptiveness (you'll see) but he's a really funny and cool guy if you get to know him. That being said, the actual lecture is derivation heavy, he only goes over examples before the actual midterms / final. So in order to succeed in this class, make sure you go to discussion sections as they go over practice problems. In addition, DO the homework. If you go to discussion sections, do the Hw, and maybe do a few more practice problems, you'll ace this class. Lastly, really pay attention to what he wants you to put on the midterms / final. For example, on Control Volume problems he'll want an axis and your CV. If you forget to put this down you'll get 0 credit for the problem. I recommend taking the class with him even if its a little stressful at times! Good Luck :)

Kavehpour is a pretty good lecturer. He explains the material well and makes sure everyone understands the concept before moving on to the next topic. He did us dirty tho by changing the final exam from take-home to in-person in the last two weeks but the grading was lenient. Homeworks are optional but you would need to do them since the exams are based on them. Discussions were pretty helpful since it covers the exam material. I would say that his tests are harder than the homework but if you pay attention to his recommendations (like drawing your control volume and stating assumptions clearly) you will get a good amount of partial credit. Also, he likes students who participate a lot and sit in the front row and will call you out if you use your phone during class.

Prefacing this review by saying that I'm not an engineering major, so imposter syndrome was often times very real. Thankfully, all turned out okay, but this class was definitely one of the more difficult ones for me. A lot of times I felt like I was scribbling down random hieroglyphs and didn't know how to decode them, or whether they were derivations or the final formulas.

Most of the details of this class have already been said: theory/derivation-heavy lectures, no graded homework, fair exams. Pictures aren't always provided, so you should also practice how to derive a diagram from any given word problem to be ready for exams. And like others have said, assumptions, control volumes, normal vectors, force arrows, and axes are all super important, because as Dr. Kavehpour says, your work and formulas mean nothing if they're not there in the image. Not sure if this is an MIT thing specifically to be stickler on these, because I remember watching a lot of MIT mechanics lectures where they were very specific on coordinate systems, and Dr. Kavehpour also went to MIT, but just a speculation. And for assumptions, don't just vomit them all out, and actually know which ones apply (particularly for Bernoulli's equation).

I'm quite intrigued by the the ancient reviews that complain about Dr. Kavehpour's theoretical approach to lecture, because pretty much all of my lower div. math and physics professors have taken this approach, and it has been up to the student and discussions to get practice problem experience. So hopefully by now you should know what resources to access (book, office hours, email) to tackle that part of the class. In fact, Dr. Kavehpour even did some practice problems before the midterms, which was immensely helpful.

Homework is not graded, and discussion is optional, but you truly cannot survive this class without the problem-solving practice that both give you, so please please do yourself a favor and do the homework and go to discussion (so that you don't have to spend 2 hours sometime later watching the recording and fall behind). Dr. Kavehpour even mentioned that the end goal (which you should hopefully know by now in these physical science classes) is to become familiar with the problem-solving approaches/strategies of this class, so that you can overcome the "hump" of not knowing what to do/being stuck when you look at problems. And you really can't do that without practice. I'd say that for the exam, a lot of the strategies were covered in homework or discussion, and some of the scenarios were framed quite similar to some of the homework questions, so again, don't skip them.

Exams are 24 hours, which can be a blessing and a curse, especially since midterms only have 2 questions. They're supposed to take you 2 hours, but if you overthink things or don't know something and refuse to give up, then they can eat up your time. A 10ish minute video is required, where you explain your problem-solving process, which wasn't bad, and it was intended to help you realize what you're doing.

Lastly, the content of this course is a little bit different from lectures you might find on youtube, particularly the CPP ones, as Dr. Kavehpour goes into a lot of detail on Reynolds Transport Theorem, pipe flow, and compressible flow, but kinda glosses over the navier-stokes equations. The topics towards the end make up about 50% of the final, and they have a formulaic process to solve the questions, which is why I feel like things turned out okay. But just keep in mind that what will be assessed might not be the hardest of what fluid mechanics has to offer, so definitely immerse yourself the learning process and be an active learner in this class to truly get the most out of it.

Kavehpour was a good teacher overall, although there may exist start-of-quarter heckling rituals when classes are in person again. He's tried out this quarter and last making homework non-graded, which I capitalized on by not doing it. Was still able to do well, but that's probably bad advice - do your homework! His lectures are mainly derivations, interesting but not really necessary, then discussions/"recitations" are where problems are solved. Sometimes there could be a weird mismatch between material covered in lecture and in discussions. For TAs, I liked Sahar's explanations of individual problems better and Ryan's discussion of general concepts (/emphasis on what to do for tests), although they both cover the same sets of practice problems generally. Both were very good. There were 2 midterms and a final, the midterms were quite easy as long as you knew how to apply the equations (and TA Ryan's emphasis on moving CV conservation equations helped here). The final was harder but it was fun, and made easier by the ubiquitous 24h rona finals. I imagine it would be quite stressful in person with 2 or 3h. Overall a good class and possible to do well if you know the material.

Lectures were very theory-driven, so it felt a bit overwhelming to follow at times. Although the lectures were not equivalent to the content on exams, I would still go just to gain exposure and some background on the topics. It is more beneficial to attend discussions since both TAs worked through problems to help practice for the exams. Exams seemed fair, and Kavehpour was even nice enough to do a few practice problems before each test. To score maximum points on the exams make sure to be overly thorough with explaining how you are solving the problems (i.e. noting the assumptions you need to make to use an equation). But you will be coached on these expectations in class and discussion, so it should not come as a surprise. Overall, the 24 hour exams immensely reduced stress, and I still feel like I learned A LOT in the course.

This was a difficult class. Professor Kavehpour is a decent lecturer and a nice guy. However, his lectures could be confusing on occasion, as he spends a lot of time going through derivations and complicated math which is hard to follow, so I didn't really learn much from watching lectures. I'd recommend watching discussions to see how to solve problems. Homework wasn't compulsory, so the workload was pretty light and you could just cram everything in the week before an exam and you should be fine.