Evolution of Teaching Hydraulic Software

The tools available for teaching hydraulic engineering classes have changed considerably in the 46 years that this professor has been at it. In the 1950s, who would have thought that the slide rule would become obsolete! Or that civil engineering students would no longer have to master the Moody diagram. Civil Engineering students at Montana State University all take a first course in Fluid Mechanics, then a junior level "water resources" course (typically using a text such as Linsley & Franzini "Water Resources Engineering"). From there they take one or more senior elective "applied hydraulics" classes, which include a "closed conduit flow" (affectionately referred to by students as "pipes and pumps") and an "open channel hydraulics" class. My teaching assignments at MSU over the years have usually included one or more of these "fluids" or "water" courses, so I have participated in and been awed by the evolution of new teaching methods in my chosen areas of expertise. In graduate school in the mid-1950s my textbooks included "Elementary Mechanics of Fluids" by Hunter Rouse and "Steady Flow in Open Channels" by Woodward and Posey. The word "computer" wasn't in our vocabulary. I'll share a few observations in each of the areas "closed conduits" and "open channels," and how teaching of undergraduate students has changed through the years.