Fluid Mechanics Lesson 04A: The Material Derivative

Fluid Mechanics Lesson Series - Lesson 04A: The Material Derivative
In this 12.5-minute video, Professor Cimbala compares the Lagrangian description to the Eulerian description and shows how to change from one to the other using the material derivative. He concentrates on the material acceleration, but the material derivative applies to any flow variable.
This video incorporates material from Section 4-1 of the Fluid Mechanics textbook by Cengel and Cimbala.

An Excel file listing of all the videos in this series can be found at


You can also watch all related short videos with one click by going to one of Dr. Cimbala's playlists:

[DeethAlAkir]

Thank you. Wish I had paid more attention in calculus. I think trying to understand fluid mechanics without strong fundamentals of calculus makes it way more difficult than it needs to be.

[douaadouaa]

I was surprised at the first time with how much your textbook is the best resource and now I am also surprised with you YouTube channel, you explained in 12 minutes what did the professor in 1h30.
Thank you very much sir, please keep posting helping videos you are our only saver teacher in fluid mechanics .

[xinghuahan]

This video helps me a lot, with very clear explanation and examples. Thank you!

[ejimadam]

I'm not sure what u, v and w are? At 7:00 what happens to u, v, and w in the operator, also i'm not sure of this combined operator and why it's not just del dotted into v. It seems wrong to me.

[gelomelo]

Great explanation 👏👏👏👏 thank you so much🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹

[bariskirmizigul]

Hi sir thank a lot. I have a question. How can we take the material derivative of velocity in cylindrical coordinates? Can you make an example of it. I couldnt find any on the internet

[commentingonly]

Nice video but I dont understand what would be the answer if in the example problem V=3xy*i-3y*j? So the first component of the vector field also depends on y for example.