Overcoming misconceptions and enhancing student's physical understanding of civil and environmental engineering fluid mechanics

Undergraduate students of fluid mechanics bring a range of preconceptions to the classroom. The sometimes counterintuitive nature of fluid mechanics means that many of these preconceptions are, in fact, misconceptions. Such misconceptions can be hard to address and can persist even among nominally high-performing students. A pedagogical approach (i.e., predict, test, and reflect) is presented. The approach provides an effective structure for addressing and correcting misconceptions through the use of low-cost hands-on activities that students can quickly and easily undertake during regular class time. The activities all have the same structure of describing the activity, having students make a prediction based on their intuition/prior experience, testing that prediction using simple, low-cost activities, reflecting on the success or failure of the prior prediction, and analysis of the activity to illustrate the correct conception of the flow. Course evaluations indicate that students have found this approach very helpful in improving their conceptual understanding in an introductory engineering fluid mechanics class. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.

Automated summary

Undergraduate students in fluid mechanics often have misconceptions, which can be challenging to address. This article presents a pedagogical approach using low-cost hands-on activities to correct these misconceptions and improve students' conceptual understanding in introductory engineering fluid mechanics.