education

The class started today.  I'll be teaching fracture mechanics this semester.  I'll be mostly using the class notes I wrote in 2010, but will post updated ones. 

In today's class I covered "Trouble with linear elastic theory of strength."  I have just posted updated notes of the lecture.  The new notes begin with the follwoing paragraphs.

I recently posted a free, online, and
condensed version of my book Intermediate Mechanics of Materials, Second
Edition. It is posted on my  website madhuvable.org
and can be used for reference or by self-learners. In addition to the
online book, there is a glossary of mechanics terms, brief reviews of
Statics, Matrix Algebra, Numerical Methods, and Mechanics of Materials.

Apples and oranges. Each element in a set is a pile containing some number of apples and some number of oranges.  Adding two piles means putting them together, resulting in a pile in the set. Multiplying a pile and a real number r means finding in the set a pile r times the amount.  We model each pile as a vector, and the set as a two-dimensional vector space over the field of real numbers.

This is an introductory post to a discussion on the advantages of multicellular organisms over single-celled eukaryotes from an energy harvesting viewpoint.  It is intended for the New Mexico Tech biomechanics class but others can play.

As engineers we should seek for a numerical measure (or some measures) that allows us to decide how close an organism is to the optimum.  Consider two cases: a seaweed in comparison to a single-cell photosynthetic eukaryote and a herbivore in comparison to a single-celled eukaryotic animal.

This afternoon, I had an extremely pleasant Google hangout with Daniel Suo, and Professors Zhigang Suo and Teng Li . Our main focus was on brainstorming ideas on how to improve the user experience on iMechanica. After an hour or so our conversation drifted towards educational topics including novel ways of incorporating technology in STEM education.

I read with interest an excellent discussion about Linear Algebra in Mechanics. I am attaching Chapter I: Tensor Preliminaries from my book Elastoplasticity Theory, which includes Hill's analysis of induced tensors mentioned in the discussion.

Update on 9 April 2016.  At the bottom of this post, I attach a pdf file of my notes on scalar.

Notes on scalars now forms part of my notes on linear algebra.