It was created, in part, to address the questions I saw most often from my students that the canon of introductory fluid mechanics textbooks couldn’t answer. What is viscosity, really? Why are the Navier-Stokes equations so difficult to solve, and how do you derive them? Why is drag sometimes linear and sometimes quadratic, but never cubic? In any case, I hope you will find my answers to these questions satisfactory.
Arnaldo Rodriguez-Gonzalez is a dynamicist, specializing in topological dynamics and its applications to fluid dynamical systems. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics from Cornell, where he worked on applications of dynamical systems theory to low-Reynolds number hydrodynamics, and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez. He has previously worked as an intern on multiple research projects, such as modeling thermal control systems for LIGO’s gravitational-wave detectors, modeling liquid xenon hydrodynamics for the XENON dark matter detector, and modeling thermoelectric superconducting magnet phenomena for both Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is also passionate about teaching, and has received the H. D. Block Prize in 2019 and 2021 for excellence in teaching engineering mechanics at Cornell.