Who said Lamb's Hydrodynamics is Dry?

[qnach]

Summary:: I remember seeing somewhere that people said Lamb's Hydrodynamics is so dry that the reader cannot see any water but drawn in a desert. But where did it come from ?

I remember seeing somewhere that people said Lamb's Hydrodynamics is so dry that the reader cannot see any water but drawn in a desert. But where did it come from ?

 

[Baluncore]

Lamb started that description about the subject himself;
As a teacher and writer his stated aim was clarity: 'somehow to make these dry bones live'.

But it has been taken up by others against his text.
See; https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.fl.01.010169.000245
"
Lamb's textbook was the predominant " high-class" textbook for many
years, certainly in England in the 1920's for students of applied mathematics,
but we were not really happy with it. Rayleigh may have contrasted it with
the "arid" textbooks of the 1860's, but in the 1920's we were complaining
that it was impossible to remember while reading Lamb that water is wet.
Something of the same dry atmosphere still persists.
"

 

[sophiecentaur]

As a teacher and writer his stated aim was clarity: 'somehow to make these dry bones live'.

A biblical quote from Ezekiel Ch37. In a vision, the prophet comes across a dry valley full of of dry bones which he sees come alive. Also the Delta Rhythm Boys released a 78 "Dem bones dem dry bones" in the '20s.

That Scripture Exam I did when I was about nine years old must have done me some good!