GROW-N

by  Prof . Arpita Mondal originally published in June14th, 2020 on  GROW's website . Many a times, I get asked by friends and family, on days that I don’t have a class – ‘but you don’t have to teach! What keeps you busy?’ I thought of penning it down once and for all, and hence this article. What does an average day in the life of an IIT professor look like? Is teaching the only thing we do? If not, what else? Why is this profession not a nine-to-seven job that let’s you forget about its joys and worries beyond the office hours? Let’s discuss that a bit. Let me take a typical day with teaching as an example, to give you some idea about what fraction of my job actually constitutes teaching. It is a day in April. I have an 8.30 am lecture. Since I have the support of my family and domestic help to look after my infant, I am at least relieved of the worry of freshening him up, brushing his teeth, feeding him, bathing him, and so on and so forth on the days that I am away for wor...

by Prof. Arpita Mondal originally published in March 6th, 2020 on  GROW's website . I am into fourth year of my teaching Applied Hydraulic Engineering to Civil Engineering BTech students at IIT Bombay – and this experience gives me some confidence to attempt to explain what hydraulic engineering is and why civil engineers should study it. Loosely put, hydraulic engineering is fluid mechanics put to engineering use. However, it is worth noting right at the outset that much of hydraulic engineering historically developed as empirical science. What is empirical science? Science that is based on observed data and that works for our practical purpose. Therefore, right from the outset of modern, urban-and-industry centric civilization, out of necessity more than anything else, engineers proudly continued to build water systems such as conduits, canals, dams or reservoirs based on empirical relationships derived from real-life observations without bothering too much about the physics of ...

Written by B.Tech students Srijan Karn, Nikhil Musale, Tushar Jindal, Tanisha Agrawal and Swastik Dasgaonkar as part of their Fluid Mechanics lab project. O riginally published in Dec 8th, 2019 on  GROW's website . We almost take our Internal Combustion Engines for granted, don’t we? All we do is buy our vehicles, hop in and drive around. There is, however, a history of development to know about. The compact, well-toned, powerful and surprisingly quiet engine that is purring under your vehicle’s hood just wasn’t the tame beast it seems to be now. It was loud, it used to roar and it used to be rather bulky. In fact, one of the very first engine designs to be conceived wasn’t even like the engine we know so well of today. An internal combustion engine is defined as an engine in which the chemical energy of the fuel is released inside the engine and used directly for mechanical work, as opposed to an external combustion engine in which a separate combustor is used to burn the fuel....

by Prof. Basudev Biswal originally published in Oct 4th, 2019 on  GROW's website . Once I met a hotel manager who after knowing that I teach at IIT Bombay asked me with curiosity if IITians always study. I told him IITians can also dance, sing, play cricket, and do a lot other cool stuffs. Of course, on an average IITians do study more than non IITians, but to say IITians always study is a myth. It is actually a human tendency to invent myths when we come across something we do not understand. It is not a surprise that outside the world of PhD there exist many myths about PhD and research scholars (those who pursue a PhD degree). This article may help you if you are at a crossroad of your life where you see PhD as one of the options ahead. Stop there and ask yourself questions In my first class this semester I handed over a set of questions to the (undergraduate) students; one of the questions was about their future plans. Close to one-third of the students were found to have no fu...