The other reviews here will give you a good idea just how great of a professor Eldredge is. He made fluid mechanics, objectively one of the hardest classes for mechanical and aerospace engineers, my easiest class this quarter. My guess is that his teaching philosophy was to make his lectures rich with valuable information and his homework difficult to solve, but make the exams on the easier side. Here is a rough breakdown of his class:

Lectures - go to every single one. You won’t regret it. The way he presents the material is very interesting, and he is able to break down even the most complex fluid concepts into digestible pieces for you, provided you supplement your lecture notes with a read through of the associated sections in the textbook. He does a lot of derivations, but he explains each step. While some people let their eyes glaze over during these parts (he never tests you on them so you can get away with it), I personally found the interplay of different fluid concepts simplifying down to a simple mathematical expression extremely fascinating, and it definitely added to my conceptual understanding of the content.

Homework (25%) - there were seven assignments in total, mostly consisting of problems from the book. Occasionally, he’ll throw in a problem of his own, but those are generally much easier to solve than the back-of-the-chapter problems. While some assignments were time-consuming, if you have a good group of friends to study with, you should have no trouble completing them in 2-3 hours with the right answers. The homework is graded on accuracy, but after looking at the Gradescope point breakdown I can confidently say that he is extremely lenient in assigning points. In most cases, an “incomplete/missing” criterion yields you the majority of the points of that problem. Small mistakes are penalized less. There is very little reason to get less than a 90% in this category.

Extra Credit (+2.5% extra) - on five of the seven assignments, we had an optional problem, which was graded on a full-credit, half-credit, and no-credit scheme. Some were questions done on Julia (you had to write code for it), and others were challenge problems from the textbook. If you got full credit on all of them, you could get 2.5% extra credit in the entire class, which is enough to give you a whole letter grade boost.

Quizzes (10%) - before each midterm and the final, Eldredge would open a quiz on CCLE. These were all conceptual and definitely helped solidify your qualitative understanding of the material. They were unlimited tries, and the questions remained the same with each attempt so you’re guaranteed a 100%.

Midterms (40%) - there are three short, 1-hour midterms in the class, which is a bit unorthodox for an upper-division engineering class. These had a mix of conceptual questions (about 30% of the points) where you had to verbally explain an answer in words and computation/derivation based questions. Your lowest grade was dropped. He made the first and third midterms easy and the middle one pretty difficult, but, as mentioned, that one doesn’t contribute to your final grade. Even with all of this, his grading scale was very lenient like the homework. In the second midterm I did one question completely wrong and was only deducted 10 points in a 35 point question. On top of that, he allowed us to bring in a double-sided printer-paper cheat sheet for the first and second midterms. To be fair though, in making the cheat sheet you review most of the information you need to know, so while taking the test I rarely found myself referring to it. After the second midterm was crashed by a some washed-up prank YouTuber, Eldredge made the third midterm and final take-home, allowing us to access any resource we wanted aside from other students.

Final (25%) - pretty much the same difficulty as the first and third midterms. 80% of the points came from the material after the third midterm, and 20% was cumulative.

11/10 would recommend Eldredge for 103. He is a very knowledgeable professor and makes himself and his TAs very accessible via email, office hours, discussion sections, and after class if you have questions.

I'll be honest here, Eldredge might be my favorite engineering professor I've had here. His lectures have a great flow to them with his own personality that makes them very engaging. He doesn't use any slides and writes everything out live so for me personally that really helped me focus and stay awake. Homework is fairly reasonable but I do recommend going to discussion regularly to have a much easier time on them. He gives extra credit problems sometimes too and if you do them all, you can get up to something like an extra 4% to your grade.

The tests were reasonable though there are three midterms in addition to a final, which may seem weird at first. Each midterm was only one question that probably took no more than like 40 minutes though and he drops your lowest midterm score so that helps a lot. They aren't terribly difficult - many people got a 100% on multiple midterms. We started out the quarter with in person tests but he switched over to online halfway through so hopefully he keeps that next time he teaches.

But yeah, clear, engaging, patient and pretty much everything a good professor should be. This sure isn't an easy class but if you take him, you're in good hands.

Great lectures and very clear. I really liked the grading distribution he had, as homework and quizzes made up 35% of the grade, quizzes can be retaken as many times as you want, so that 35% is already a guaranteed A, as long as you attempt the homework as well. Final only worth 25% which is less stressful than other courses where it's 40+%. Then 3 midterms, and he drops the lowest one, which is also great. Highly recommend for Mae 103.

Jeffrey is a really good professor. He’s really helpful when you ask him questions after class. For his class, I did the assigned reading. That along with doing the homework was more than good enough to do well on his tests. His lectures are good for review but not necessary if you read the book. Make sure you are checking your homework answers with people before you submit it. He offers extra credit so try to do it if you can. His tests are hard in the sense that he gives you questions you have never seen before but if you come prepared you should do fine on them. Also he doesn’t test you on everything he teaches in class. For example, fluidstatics was never on his exams for this quarter.

Fluids are hard, but Eldredge does an excellent job. There were 3 midterms, lowest one got dropped. The first test was super easy, the next two were much more difficult, but they were graded leniently. The final was cake. Eldredge is very helpful if you go to OH or email him. He actually made an effort to teach us despite the circumstances. I would absolutely take him for another class again. I highly doubt you can do better than Eldredge.

Lectures: does a good job going over the key concepts and making connections between different ideas; although you should still prepare to read or at least browse the textbook.

Discussions: fairly good summary of the conceptual materials and good practice problems

Office hours: very friendly and willing to help

Homework: can take a while but really good practice and does a good job preparing for the exams

Exams: can range in difficulty level, but overall really fair as he really wants the students to be successful

Overall: really good professor who also can take a bit of fun comments. He cares about student learning and is very supportive. Definitely recommend

Professor Eldredge did an excellent job breaking down confusing material and making it understandable for his students. He explains concepts very thoroughly. I found the class to be of reasonable difficulty, which, in my opinion, shows how great he is at teaching since fluids is known to be challenging. I was probably the only CS major to take this class, and I don't regret taking it. Extra credit problems are offered on some homework assignments and each one adds .5% to your overall grade. The midterm and final are weighted evenly (30%) and the final is not cumulative, which is pretty nice.

Excellent professor. His lectures are quite clear and straightforward, and he cares about the students in the class. While the homework and exam may be challenging, it frankly does not detract from the course, and I always felt like I learned something worthwhile and important. Highly recommend.

Fantastic professor. Eldredge knows what he is talking about and he makes his lectures very straightforward. He is a very understanding teacher and wants to make sure that everyone understands what is going on. Office hours are great if you have any minor questions. If you ask about homework he will discuss how to approach the problem but never directly tell you how to solve the problem which I think is good for purposes of making sure that you yourself know the material. He also encourages to go to office hours to discuss how you personally did on the midterm which I think is very generous of him considering the number of students in the class. Ended up with an A in the class. Take him for 103, I highly encourage it.