CN2122 Fluid Mechanics is a 5 MC module that deals with fluid motion and calculation of mass, forces and energy changes around the system. The concepts in this module are really not easy to understand at first as they are very new. Constant revision is required in order to better understand the formulas used in fluid motion. The module is taught by three different Profs for the first time and it is the first time that it is increased from 4 MCs to 5 MCs. So, there is a lot that I want to share in this review.
Assessment
20% Test 1 (1 hour, Open Book)
20% Test 2 (100 minutes, Closed book, 1 A4 Cheatsheet)
10% Assignment
50% Finals (2 hours, Closed book, 2 page A4 Cheatsheet)
20% Test 2 (100 minutes, Closed book, 1 A4 Cheatsheet)
10% Assignment
50% Finals (2 hours, Closed book, 2 page A4 Cheatsheet)
Lecturer:
Week 1 to Week 4: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 5 to Week 6: A/Prof Eldin Lim Wee Chuan
Week 7 to Week 9: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 10 to 13: A/Prof Chen Po-Yen
Week 1 to Week 4: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 5 to Week 6: A/Prof Eldin Lim Wee Chuan
Week 7 to Week 9: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 10 to 13: A/Prof Chen Po-Yen
Tutor:
Week 2 to Week 5: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 6 to Week 7: A/Prof Eldin Lim Wee Chuan
Week 8 to Week 10: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 11 to Week 13: A/Prof Chen Po-Yen
Week 2 to Week 5: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 6 to Week 7: A/Prof Eldin Lim Wee Chuan
Week 8 to Week 10: A/Prof Ti Hwei Chen
Week 11 to Week 13: A/Prof Chen Po-Yen
Textbooks/Readings
Fox and Macdonald's Introduction to Fluid Mechanics for Prof Ti's and Prof Chen's portion. Martin Rhode's Introduction to Particle Technology (2nd Edition) for Prof Eldin's portions. The profs will cut out examples or diagrams from the textbooks to input into their lecture notes. I don't feel that there is a need to get the textbooks (except for Prof Eldin's portion) as the lecture notes are quite detailed (although hard to understand haha). Past year tutorials and papers are also provided by seniors, so extra practices via the textbook is not a must.
Lectures
Fox and Macdonald's Introduction to Fluid Mechanics for Prof Ti's and Prof Chen's portion. Martin Rhode's Introduction to Particle Technology (2nd Edition) for Prof Eldin's portions. The profs will cut out examples or diagrams from the textbooks to input into their lecture notes. I don't feel that there is a need to get the textbooks (except for Prof Eldin's portion) as the lecture notes are quite detailed (although hard to understand haha). Past year tutorials and papers are also provided by seniors, so extra practices via the textbook is not a must.
Lectures
There were 2 lectures per week. Each lecture were 2 hours long. Basically, this module has a lot (and I mean a lot of content). Again, I prefer to attend the lectures, rather than watch webcasts. Most of the lecture time is actually spent on deriving certain formulas for us to better understand how these formulas come about. Examples were provided too for us to see the application of the formulas. The derivation is not required to be known for this module (as well as in 2121) but it is good to understand the basics around the formula (like why the terms are written this way). There is a lot of integrals in this module, so be prepared.
Prof Ti would most probably not be teaching this module anymore as he is retiring but I will still write my review about his lectures. Prof Ti has been teaching his portion of CN2122 for a pretttyyy long period of time already and he doesn't really change his notes over the years. He covered pressure in static fluids, continuity equation, energy equation, momentum and moment of momentum equation as well as major and minor losses across systems. It is not easy to understand him at first as he has his own ways of looking at certain systems and the terms used (e.g. control volume, control surface etc) are very new to me too. I had to read through his lecture notes multiple times before I could understand certain concepts. Luckily, after a while, I did get used to his way of explaining the concepts and it wasn't that bad listening to his lectures anymore. Prof Ti likes to also say things like "You should have learnt this in secondary school or in JC" which does lower our self esteem to be honest because we really have not seen some of these formulas before.
Prof Eldin only taught us for 2 weeks. His portion is the shortest and he covered mainly on packed bed reactors, particle flow in fluids as well as fluidization. His portion was orignally a module by itself called CN3124 Particle Technology but the module is now removed. And only a portion of that module is being taught in CN2122. Prof Eldin's lecture is easier to understand than Prof Ti's. Prof Eldin spends a lot of time trying to slowly break down the concepts for us and sometimes will also draw additional diagrams on the visualizer to help us understand. He will usually tell us to listen to him first and then read his lecture notes after the lecture. In my opinion, he explains the concepts really well but he does sound rather monotonous. So, try to stay focused haha. His lecture notes are pretty good. His textbook portion can be downloaded for free via NUS libraries. He will teach us how to download the textbook on the first lecture. The tutorial questions he wants us to practice are all in the textbook so it is good to download this textbook. The tutorial questions in the textbook have final answers printed as well, so it is good to practice these questions too.
As for Prof Chen, I feel that he is the best lecturer out of all the 3 lecturers for this module. He explains the concepts best and even brings the different setups to lecture itself. Like he brought a legit centrifugal pump to lecture so that we can understand how the fluid motion works inside the pump. His concepts taught are not easy to understand either but he explains it very carefully and slowly so that it is much easier to comprehend. He covered laminar velocity profile, boundary layer, turbulent layer and pumps and turbines. His lecture notes are detailed enough and in my opinion, there isn't a need to read the textbook. He does also write additional notes and diagrams on the visualizer for us.
Prof Ti would most probably not be teaching this module anymore as he is retiring but I will still write my review about his lectures. Prof Ti has been teaching his portion of CN2122 for a pretttyyy long period of time already and he doesn't really change his notes over the years. He covered pressure in static fluids, continuity equation, energy equation, momentum and moment of momentum equation as well as major and minor losses across systems. It is not easy to understand him at first as he has his own ways of looking at certain systems and the terms used (e.g. control volume, control surface etc) are very new to me too. I had to read through his lecture notes multiple times before I could understand certain concepts. Luckily, after a while, I did get used to his way of explaining the concepts and it wasn't that bad listening to his lectures anymore. Prof Ti likes to also say things like "You should have learnt this in secondary school or in JC" which does lower our self esteem to be honest because we really have not seen some of these formulas before.
Prof Eldin only taught us for 2 weeks. His portion is the shortest and he covered mainly on packed bed reactors, particle flow in fluids as well as fluidization. His portion was orignally a module by itself called CN3124 Particle Technology but the module is now removed. And only a portion of that module is being taught in CN2122. Prof Eldin's lecture is easier to understand than Prof Ti's. Prof Eldin spends a lot of time trying to slowly break down the concepts for us and sometimes will also draw additional diagrams on the visualizer to help us understand. He will usually tell us to listen to him first and then read his lecture notes after the lecture. In my opinion, he explains the concepts really well but he does sound rather monotonous. So, try to stay focused haha. His lecture notes are pretty good. His textbook portion can be downloaded for free via NUS libraries. He will teach us how to download the textbook on the first lecture. The tutorial questions he wants us to practice are all in the textbook so it is good to download this textbook. The tutorial questions in the textbook have final answers printed as well, so it is good to practice these questions too.
As for Prof Chen, I feel that he is the best lecturer out of all the 3 lecturers for this module. He explains the concepts best and even brings the different setups to lecture itself. Like he brought a legit centrifugal pump to lecture so that we can understand how the fluid motion works inside the pump. His concepts taught are not easy to understand either but he explains it very carefully and slowly so that it is much easier to comprehend. He covered laminar velocity profile, boundary layer, turbulent layer and pumps and turbines. His lecture notes are detailed enough and in my opinion, there isn't a need to read the textbook. He does also write additional notes and diagrams on the visualizer for us.
Tutorial
Okay, time for tutorials. Tutorials were once a week and 1 hour long. Prof Ti's tutorials are kind of a dread to go because he requires us to present solutions for certain questions in the tutorial. He would just call us randomly up to explain. Then, if we don't have any questions, then he would just move on to the next question without explaining anything sometimes. Eventually, the number of people attending his tutorials reduced by quite a lot. Towards the end, he even cancelled the tutorials and decided to explain the tutorial during the lecture itself. During the lectures, he actually explained the tutorial problems pretty well and highlighted the concepts required for each question. I actually wished that he'll do the same during the tutorial. I feel that we cannot present our solutions very well during tutorials because these concepts are still relatively foreign to us at that point of time.
Prof Eldin's tutorials are a must go. He loves to reveal exam tips and certain concepts that he wants to test during finals. Prof Eldin would usually give a brief summary of his lecture content first before going through the tutorial questions. He has his own powerpoint slides with solutions in it. Similar to lectures, he would tell us to listen to his explanation first and told us to read the solutions after tutorial. I felt that this wasn't a bad idea as he breaks down the content pretty well through his explanations. There were only two tutorial sessions with him but the content covered is not that little. Do look through the past year CN3124 questions as well as it will help a lot.
For Prof Chen, he uploads the tutorial questions and the solutions together. It is really good in my opinion as the solutions can answer some of the doubts that I have with certain concepts. Similar to Prof Eldin, Prof Chen would summarise the content in lectures first before explaining the tutorial problems. He likes to go step by step when explaning the problems, which I like a lot. He would explain even simple terms which serves as a reminder in my opinion. I would greatly advise to go for his tutorials too as he would also give tips on answering certain questions.
(My review is based on the lecturers and tutors teaching CN2122 in my semester. If another lecturer is teaching CN2122 for your semester, then the experience might be different. The content should still be similar which means you might still face the problem of having to read the lecture notes multiple times before being able to understand the concepts haha.)
Tests
There were 2 tests in total, each of 20%. The first test was Prof Ti's portion in week 8, from the beginning of his lectures till energy equations. The paper consisted of 5 MCQ questions, 1 hour long and it is open book. Prof Ti's way of testing is very interesting but since he's retiring already, I don't think you'll be able to experience it hahaha. Basically, each of us will get different page numbers. Then for each page number, the values given for the question is different. So, our MCQ answers will all be different. (Means technically we can't compare answers after the paper) I did the past year papers which helped me a lot, so I did decently well for this test. HOWEVER, there's this little problem for the first test. Basically, Prof Ti didn't exactly had enough time to finish going through the tutorial questions up till energy equations because 2 weeks of lectures and tutorials were taken up by Prof Eldin. In the end, Prof Ti had to cancel tutorials and did the explanations during lecture (thankfully before the test). I felt that Prof Ti's portion should be taught finished first before Prof Eldin comes in with his lecures, so there may be a little of a scheduling problem here.
The second test was for Prof Chen's portion in week 12, from Chapter 1 to 3 (laminar velocity profile, bondary layer, velocity potential and stream function). This test is 100 minutes long (be thankful that it is 100 minutes long). Only a 2 page cheatsheet was allowed to be brought in for the test. Prof's Chen's way of testing is pretty interesting. The test included T/F questions, definitions of terms and 2 structured questions. Since Prof told us that there were definitions tested, I wrote them inside my cheatsheet. The test was thankfully not as bad as I thought because I really made full use of the 100 minutes to complete the paper. I did rigorous practice of past year tutorials as well so that I have a better grasp of the concepts tested. Overall, I didn't do too bad for this test.
Assignment
As for the assignment, this is for Prof Eldin's portion. It is 10%. Basically there is a case study of an engineer solving a certain problem and we are supposed to critique the way the engineer solved the problem. After that, we would recommend our own solutions. Since discussion with friends is allowed, I discussed with others for the assignment and it wasn't a very big problem. However, there were some concepts required that were only briefly touched on during lecture. (This applies for finals too, so do read every part of the lecture notes carefully.
Prof Eldin's tutorials are a must go. He loves to reveal exam tips and certain concepts that he wants to test during finals. Prof Eldin would usually give a brief summary of his lecture content first before going through the tutorial questions. He has his own powerpoint slides with solutions in it. Similar to lectures, he would tell us to listen to his explanation first and told us to read the solutions after tutorial. I felt that this wasn't a bad idea as he breaks down the content pretty well through his explanations. There were only two tutorial sessions with him but the content covered is not that little. Do look through the past year CN3124 questions as well as it will help a lot.
For Prof Chen, he uploads the tutorial questions and the solutions together. It is really good in my opinion as the solutions can answer some of the doubts that I have with certain concepts. Similar to Prof Eldin, Prof Chen would summarise the content in lectures first before explaining the tutorial problems. He likes to go step by step when explaning the problems, which I like a lot. He would explain even simple terms which serves as a reminder in my opinion. I would greatly advise to go for his tutorials too as he would also give tips on answering certain questions.
(My review is based on the lecturers and tutors teaching CN2122 in my semester. If another lecturer is teaching CN2122 for your semester, then the experience might be different. The content should still be similar which means you might still face the problem of having to read the lecture notes multiple times before being able to understand the concepts haha.)
Tests
There were 2 tests in total, each of 20%. The first test was Prof Ti's portion in week 8, from the beginning of his lectures till energy equations. The paper consisted of 5 MCQ questions, 1 hour long and it is open book. Prof Ti's way of testing is very interesting but since he's retiring already, I don't think you'll be able to experience it hahaha. Basically, each of us will get different page numbers. Then for each page number, the values given for the question is different. So, our MCQ answers will all be different. (Means technically we can't compare answers after the paper) I did the past year papers which helped me a lot, so I did decently well for this test. HOWEVER, there's this little problem for the first test. Basically, Prof Ti didn't exactly had enough time to finish going through the tutorial questions up till energy equations because 2 weeks of lectures and tutorials were taken up by Prof Eldin. In the end, Prof Ti had to cancel tutorials and did the explanations during lecture (thankfully before the test). I felt that Prof Ti's portion should be taught finished first before Prof Eldin comes in with his lecures, so there may be a little of a scheduling problem here.
The second test was for Prof Chen's portion in week 12, from Chapter 1 to 3 (laminar velocity profile, bondary layer, velocity potential and stream function). This test is 100 minutes long (be thankful that it is 100 minutes long). Only a 2 page cheatsheet was allowed to be brought in for the test. Prof's Chen's way of testing is pretty interesting. The test included T/F questions, definitions of terms and 2 structured questions. Since Prof told us that there were definitions tested, I wrote them inside my cheatsheet. The test was thankfully not as bad as I thought because I really made full use of the 100 minutes to complete the paper. I did rigorous practice of past year tutorials as well so that I have a better grasp of the concepts tested. Overall, I didn't do too bad for this test.
Assignment
As for the assignment, this is for Prof Eldin's portion. It is 10%. Basically there is a case study of an engineer solving a certain problem and we are supposed to critique the way the engineer solved the problem. After that, we would recommend our own solutions. Since discussion with friends is allowed, I discussed with others for the assignment and it wasn't a very big problem. However, there were some concepts required that were only briefly touched on during lecture. (This applies for finals too, so do read every part of the lecture notes carefully.
Final Exam
WOAHHH, final exam hahaha. Only 2 hours; and there are literally 3 booklets for the paper. Like one Prof's content to one booklet. Thankfully, there were key formulas printed at the back of each booklet (such as Navier Stokes Equation etc). However, even with so muchhh content, we were only allowed to bring in an A4 2 page cheatsheet to the exam hall. I wrote everything as small as I could and managed to squeeze all that I needed inside the cheatsheet. You can view my cheatsheet here. I practiced the past year papers, practice problems given by the Profs as well as redid tutorials in order to prepare for this paper. I would say that 2 hours is obviously not enough and there is really no way to finish the paper hahaha. But I'm glad that I did sufficient preparation for the paper.
There were 5 questions in total. For Prof Ti's portion, there were 2 questions and was 30% of the finals. There were certain phrasing of the questions that I was unsure of. But Prof Ti has clearly mentioned that we had to write the control volume chosen clearly as well as state our assumptions clearly. That was exactly what I did, so yayy.
For Prof Chen's portion, there were also 2 questions and was 30% of the finals. Prof Chen's portion was the easiest out of the 3 in my opinion. I think it's because of sufficient practice that I did, since I knew how to approach the questions asked. Thus, this portion wasn't a big problem.
Prof Eldin's portion was the toughest. There was only 1 question but it is 40% of the entire finals. The question format is similar to the assignment but the problem is now different(obviously). There was one or two questions that I haven't exactly seen before so I wasn't sure how to approach the questions. I did this portion the last so I was rushing through it. (I did Prof Chen's one first, then Prof Ti's, then Prof Eldin's) I didn't manage to finish this portion since there wasn't enough time and I was also unsure of how to tackle the problem.
At this point of writing, only Prof Ti has provided feedback for the paper. His feedback was mainly about us not stating our assumptions clearly and not approaching the questions the right way (meaning we're conceptually wrong).
There were 5 questions in total. For Prof Ti's portion, there were 2 questions and was 30% of the finals. There were certain phrasing of the questions that I was unsure of. But Prof Ti has clearly mentioned that we had to write the control volume chosen clearly as well as state our assumptions clearly. That was exactly what I did, so yayy.
For Prof Chen's portion, there were also 2 questions and was 30% of the finals. Prof Chen's portion was the easiest out of the 3 in my opinion. I think it's because of sufficient practice that I did, since I knew how to approach the questions asked. Thus, this portion wasn't a big problem.
Prof Eldin's portion was the toughest. There was only 1 question but it is 40% of the entire finals. The question format is similar to the assignment but the problem is now different
At this point of writing, only Prof Ti has provided feedback for the paper. His feedback was mainly about us not stating our assumptions clearly and not approaching the questions the right way (meaning we're conceptually wrong).
Expected Grade: A
Final Grade: A+
Final Comments
THIS MODULE IS NOT EASY. I spent a lot, and I mean a lottt of time, reading the lecture notes, online forums etc, to understand the concepts taught. I practiced tutorial questions over and over again so that I can be more confident in tackling the problems. Be prepared to invest quite a bit of time in this module. Start revising this module early (as compared to CN2121) and I can assure you that you won't regret it.
Stay tuned for more updates.
- Alan