FLUID MECHANICS POETRY CONTEST

During Spring 2002 Colorado State Engineering Students in CE300/ME342 wrote poems
about Fluid Mechanics as an extra credit assignment:.

More than 33 poems were submitted ranging from Haiku, Cinquain Poems, Diamentes Poems,
Odes, Limericks, Shape Poems and more conventional fair.  Below are shown the top three winners
who each received a small prize:   Awards were chosen jointly by the Civil and Mechanical Engineering
Department Heads, Dr. Allan Kirkpatrick and Dr. Sandra Woods, respectively.

First Prize:        The Vapor Power Plant    and    Wind

Second Prize    Fluid Mechanics is a Drag

Third Prize        The Reynolds Equation
 
 

First Prize:    Anonymous, Mechanical Engineering

The Vapor Power Plant (a technical poem)

The vapor power plant is a wonderful thing
It is governed and based on the laws of Rankine
It gives your home power, produced by the turbine

Coal, gas or other combusted in the boiler
The pump is the heart, it gives the system pressure
Ending with liquid, condensed by the condenser.
 

Wind (a corny, yet poetic poem)

I stand alone among the trees awaiting
        her return
The empty silence she has left me
        which leaves me yearning
Then I feel her cold breath on the back
        of my neck
I close my eyes and breath her in
I turn to feel her soothing caress on
        my cheeks
She brings life to all that
        surrounds her
I hear the fall leaves begin to rustle
I see the dust dancing off the ground
        I feel alive
Just as quickly as she has arrived
        she will disappera
Without revealing herself to me
Without leaving a trace of herself behind
Once again I am left alone
        and all is tranquil
 

Second Prize:    Jeniffer Regel, Civil Engineering
 

Fluid Mechanics is a Drag

I would like to know,
Why a ten a.m. class on fluid flow?
Conservation of energy will even state,
A body not in motion will be late.
Oh the misery of an alarm's persistence,
When one must awake to a shower's flow resistance.

Bernoulli, Bernoulli, why "Hydrodynamics"?
More useful would be Opposite Gender Mechanics!
For when I explain the buoyant force of a sphere,
My dinner date edges away further, not near.
Oh, this boy is much more dense than Hg,
(That's okay; we pity those with a business degree!)

They will never know a floating body will be stable,
When the center of buoyancy is above the navel.
Or that Fluid Dynamics goes much beyond a pipe,
Density and velocity are not just hype.
When multiplied by Diameter and divided by mu,
We can understand that Reynolds' numbers are TRUE!

This class has had me thinking in many dimensions,
Buckingham Pi I won't even mention!
Two armed sprinklers and angles galore,
Just thinking about them makes my head sore.
Time to take some Tylenol and load up my bag,
Fluid Mechanics can be such a Drag!
 

Third Prize:    Erica Spencer, Civil Engineering
 

The Reynolds Equation

Density is something
We learned early in school,
Mass per volume,
It's so very cool.

Velocity is
How fast you can go.
It can be figured
With area and flow.

It's easily measured
With a ruler or tape
Just straight across
The diameter of the pipe.

Viscosity however
Is new and fun
It's one of the last
We're almost done.

Put this all together
With Buckingham Pi
Reynolds number is the answer
Thank you!  Good-bye!