Progress in CFX

Last term we did an introductory course for ANSYS CFX and I found it really interesting. ANSYS CFX is a computer package with which you can design an object, then create a mesh to cover it (imagine a spider's web stretched over the object) and then you can set parameters and things and tell it to model what would happen if water came in one end, air through the top and there was just one outlet pipe (for example). Then as if by magic the program thinks about it for a while and gives you an answer.

Well now we have to do some coursework using it, it's not due until May and today I started it finally. I've been trying to start it for the past 4 weeks now, but all my attempts have been thwarted by the problem of a locked door. There is just one room in the whole university that has CFX computers in apparently and as CFD Masters students we are allowed to go in there. Only the door is always locked. It took two weeks to ascertain who was going to be allowed to give us permission to go in there. Then that person was off sick, then he was in meetings for most of last week. Well today I caught up with his secretary again and found out that the room is meant to be unlocked in office hours and that we can go in whenever we want, so long as there isn't a class in progress. Hurrah!

So I spent an hour or so playing with a piece of software I learnt a little bit about 3 months ago and haven't been able to touch since. On my third attempt I managed to complete the basic design for the object we were told to create. I meshed it first time without any problems. Then I tried to open it in what they call the Pre-Processor. I failed. It's got the wrong file extension and I have no idea how to convert it to the correct one. I can't recall that we were ever told how to go from meshing to pre. This is frustrating. I'm hoping that someone else in my class knows and can show me later in the week. This should not be a problem considering we're now allowed in the room Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm.

The world through the eyes of a mathematician

I will begin as I have done previously with a quote from Ian Stewart's letters to a young mathematician.

"I am reminded of one of the many stories mathematicians tell each other after all nonmathematicians leave the room. A mathematician at a famous university went to look around the new auditorium, and when she got there, she found the dean of the faculty staring at the ceiling and muttering to himself, "...forty-five, forty-six, forty-seven..." Naturally she interrupted the count to find out what it was for. "I'm counting the lights," said the dean. The mathematician looked up at the perfect rectangular array of lights and said, "That's easy, there are ... twelve that way, and ... eight that way. Twelve eights are ninety-six." "No, no," said the dean impatiently. "I want the exact number."
Even when it comes to something as simple as counting, we mathematicians see the world differently from other folk."

People the world over see things differently, but I find that more often than not mathematicians/scientists see the world in a similar way to each other, but in a totally different way to an artist or a musician.

I wonder why we see things differently. Do we see things differently because of our different interests? Or are we interested in different things because we see things differently?

It's like the chicken and the egg saga. Which comes first? Is it instilled in us from birth? Are we genetically programmed to be like we are? Do environmental factors play a part at all?

I don't know the answers, but it does make interesting thinking. For me anyway. But is that because I'm a mathematician? I have no idea if an artist would find this idea interesting or not.