Well its that time of the year when one contemplates what one will be doing in the future. As anyone involved in this OU lark will know this is a perpetual problem. Matters not being helped by the fact that the OU seems to be engaged in a perpetual revision of their courses and the fee structure changing etc. Anyway my immediate plans after my current OU courses have finished are
Oct 2013 - June 2014 M381 Number theory and logic and the quantum entanglement project
Oct 2014 - June 2015 Third level Philosophy course
This will complete my second Open degree which has concentrated on mathematics and philosophy after I have decided to discount Topology as I only got grade 4
In the meantime I have opened up my third :) Open degree with my current OU course in Music and I intend to do at least another third level course in Music and the new third level pure maths course M303 that is due to start in October 2014 but I will probably do it in October 2015.
After that I shall (finally) embark on the maths MSc at one course per year
However there is lots of other stuff for me to do. I want to get piano lessons at the end of June and embark on the grade exams, Hopefully at least 1 a year and maybe 1 every 6 months after again I finally get started.
Also grade 5 - 8 theory in the next year or two so that I can start the OCA compositon courses
http://www.oca-uk.com/subjects/music.html
with the aim in the next 5 years or so of completing those and hopefully up to grade 5 or 6 piano,
Finally in the long term I haven't given up my hopes of doing a philosophy MA but I think the only reasonable way to do it is via St Davids
http://www.trinitysaintdavid.ac.uk/en/courses/postgraduatecourses/maeuropeanphilosophy/
This means focusing on Continental philosophy rather than my favourite branch Analytic philosophy but this does not look feasible as the fees for part time postgraduate study at Edinburgh University are circa £4000 a year and rising. Whereas my budget is about £2000 a year and St Davids seem to have the price correct.
The easy option would be to do the OU MA in philosophy but the focus of that is social and political not really my thing. With St Davids I would at least get to understand the background to say the relationship between Schopenhauer, Nietszche and Wagner, or the ideas of the Frankfurt school especially Adorno on a critical approach to Music. Then possibly onto a Phd which take me close to seventy. Then this education lark might finally be over. I'm hoping also that the break between June and September will give me time to get back into my big bang calculation with the aim of finishing that by end 2014 Watch this space.
Sunday 24 March 2013
Sunday 10 March 2013
MST326 Fluids 2nd TMA
Well as promised here is my review of the 2nd Fluids TMA
Block 2 can be described as a crash course in the essentials of Fluid dynamics it covers in 4 short units, Streamlines and path lines. The Euler equation, the equation of continuity, Bernoullis equation and it's application to flows where the diameter changes, Vorticity and flow around shapes such as cylinders and last but not least the Navier Stokes equations which deals with viscous flow. As Feynman said in his lectures treating Fluid flow without consideration of viscosity is like treating the flow of dry fluids.
Anyway the questions covered the following topics
Question 1 We had to calculate the pathlines and streamlines for a two dimensional flow and sketch these for various questions. As the books say Straightforward but tedious especially the sketching. Got most of it out
Question 2. A relatively straightforward but again tedious question involving the solution of Bernoullis equation for the flow of water over a hump. We had to calculate the variation in height along certain points. One slightly interesting aspect of all this is that quite often one has to solve a cubic equation so a potential hint of Galois theory here, But the question usually involves solving the resultant equation by the Newton Raphson method. Unfortunately by the later half of the question I had lost the will to live so about 2/3 of the marks here
Question 3 Calculating the flow and vorticity for flow around a segment of a cylinder for a given stream function the vorticity is the curl of the velocity vector. The meat of the question involved the calculation of the force on the cylinder I got this out but again by the end of the question I had lost the wiil to live so again about 3/4 of the marks
Question 4 Involved the setting up of the Navier Stokes equation and the appropriate boundary conditions for the flow of two layers of liquid between two plates one of which was moving with constant velocity. This question was a test of both the physics and the maths. One had to justify the various approximations. Again the meat of the question involved the solving of the Navier Stokes equations for the problem this was straightforward but tedious especially as the form of the equation required in the final answer involved recasting some of the constants in terms of another constant. This just added to the tedium but I got there in the end. and got most of the marks I think
So overall I think I'll just get enough for a grade 2 pass. There was a lot of tedious curve sketching for this TMA and I think I prefer the mathematical aspects. Next block gets back to the nitty gritty of solving partial differential equations including a brief look at one of my favourite topics Sturm Liouville theory of which I've been having a little discussion on the quantum mechanics forum about.
In general Fluid mechanics is simply a matter of balancing equations and Newton's laws of motion. On the other hand who would have thought some thing quite conceptually straightforward would lead to the complications of something like the Navier Stokes equations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations
Fluid mechanics is just Conservation of Energy and Newtons second law but you have to know them really well.
As a footnote I got a respectable 72% for my last music TMA.
Thats all folks till next time. Will speak about the first quantum mechanics TMA next.
Block 2 can be described as a crash course in the essentials of Fluid dynamics it covers in 4 short units, Streamlines and path lines. The Euler equation, the equation of continuity, Bernoullis equation and it's application to flows where the diameter changes, Vorticity and flow around shapes such as cylinders and last but not least the Navier Stokes equations which deals with viscous flow. As Feynman said in his lectures treating Fluid flow without consideration of viscosity is like treating the flow of dry fluids.
Anyway the questions covered the following topics
Question 1 We had to calculate the pathlines and streamlines for a two dimensional flow and sketch these for various questions. As the books say Straightforward but tedious especially the sketching. Got most of it out
Question 2. A relatively straightforward but again tedious question involving the solution of Bernoullis equation for the flow of water over a hump. We had to calculate the variation in height along certain points. One slightly interesting aspect of all this is that quite often one has to solve a cubic equation so a potential hint of Galois theory here, But the question usually involves solving the resultant equation by the Newton Raphson method. Unfortunately by the later half of the question I had lost the will to live so about 2/3 of the marks here
Question 3 Calculating the flow and vorticity for flow around a segment of a cylinder for a given stream function the vorticity is the curl of the velocity vector. The meat of the question involved the calculation of the force on the cylinder I got this out but again by the end of the question I had lost the wiil to live so again about 3/4 of the marks
Question 4 Involved the setting up of the Navier Stokes equation and the appropriate boundary conditions for the flow of two layers of liquid between two plates one of which was moving with constant velocity. This question was a test of both the physics and the maths. One had to justify the various approximations. Again the meat of the question involved the solving of the Navier Stokes equations for the problem this was straightforward but tedious especially as the form of the equation required in the final answer involved recasting some of the constants in terms of another constant. This just added to the tedium but I got there in the end. and got most of the marks I think
So overall I think I'll just get enough for a grade 2 pass. There was a lot of tedious curve sketching for this TMA and I think I prefer the mathematical aspects. Next block gets back to the nitty gritty of solving partial differential equations including a brief look at one of my favourite topics Sturm Liouville theory of which I've been having a little discussion on the quantum mechanics forum about.
In general Fluid mechanics is simply a matter of balancing equations and Newton's laws of motion. On the other hand who would have thought some thing quite conceptually straightforward would lead to the complications of something like the Navier Stokes equations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_equations
Fluid mechanics is just Conservation of Energy and Newtons second law but you have to know them really well.
As a footnote I got a respectable 72% for my last music TMA.
Thats all folks till next time. Will speak about the first quantum mechanics TMA next.
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