San Diego State University

FAVE

Fluids, AI, and Visualization for Education

Making the math and physics behind fluids, AI, and the world around us visible, playable, and inspiring — for students of every age.

An education program led by Qi Wang, Ph.D. · Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, SDSU

Explore the program

Four ways to learn with FAVE

FAVE brings scientific computing and AI to learners through a hands-on summer workshop, animated math & physics you can interact with, science told through music — and now a game-based university course.

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In person · Summer

AI, Science & Robotics Workshop

A two-day, hands-on summer workshop at SDSU for K–12 and community-college students — train a real AI model, build a soft robot, run physics simulations, and present a team project.

  • Machine learning, generative AI & world models
  • Soft robotics & physics simulation
  • Project showcase + certificate
Visit the workshop site →
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Research · Open source

Animated Math & Physics LLM2Manim

LLM2Manim turns a plain-language description of a math or physics concept into a narrated animation — a pedagogy-aware AI pipeline that writes Manim code and voiceover, grounded in multimedia-learning principles.

  • Text → narrated STEM animation
  • Human-in-the-loop, multiple LLM backends
  • Study: higher scores & lower cognitive load vs. slides
View on GitHub →
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Watch · YouTube

Science & Music

The Qi Wang Science and Piano channel — where physics meets the piano. Vibration, frequency, resonance and the hidden science of sound, told (and played) through music.

  • Science of sound, pitch & resonance
  • Piano performance meets physics
  • New videos on @fluidpianist
Watch on YouTube →
✈️
SDSU Course · Game-based

AE 302 · High-Speed Aerodynamics 7 games live

The workshop's play-first approach, applied to a university course: compressible flow taught through interactive games — feel the physics, then do the math.

  • Shock waves, expansion fans & the sound barrier
  • Nozzles & supersonic wind tunnels, live in the browser
  • Play the concept first, compute it second
Play the course modules →

About the program

What is FAVE?

FAVE — Fluids, AI, and Visualization for Education — is an education initiative that turns the mathematics and physics behind fluids, scientific computing, and artificial intelligence into things students can see, touch, and hear. It grows out of research in computational fluid dynamics and scientific machine learning, and shares it through hands-on experiences for K–12 students, community-college students, and educators.

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See it

Visualizations and animations that reveal the idea behind a formula — not just the symbols.

Play with it

Interactive, browser-based demos and a summer workshop where students build and experiment.

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Hear it

Science told through music — because the physics of sound is the physics of everything that vibrates.

Pillar 1 · In person

AI, Science & Robotics Summer Workshop

FAVE's flagship in-person event: a two-day, project-based workshop at San Diego State University introducing students to AI, scientific computing, and robotics through live demos, simple labs, and a team project they present on Day 2. No experience needed.

Open the workshop site →

Pillar 2 · Research & open source

Animated Math & Physics — LLM2Manim

FAVE's research engine for animated learning. LLM2Manim is a pedagogy-aware, human-in-the-loop pipeline that uses a large language model to convert math and physics concepts into narrated animations built with Python's Manim library — applying multimedia-learning principles like segmentation and dual coding so the result actually teaches, not just dazzles.

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Describe

Type a concept in plain language — an equation, a force diagram, a phenomenon.

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Generate

The LLM writes the Manim animation code and a matching voiceover, with automatic error-checking and fixes.

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Learn

You get a narrated animation that walks a learner through the idea step by step.

Evidence it works: in a study of 100 undergraduates, students who learned from LLM2Manim animations scored higher than with traditional slides (83% vs. 78%), reported greater engagement, and experienced lower cognitive load.

Paper: LLM2Manim: Pedagogy-Aware AI Generation of STEM Animations — Aastha Joshi, Hongyi Ke, Meet Gajjar, Aaron Christian, Qi Wang & Jun Chen.

View on GitHub → Read the paper (arXiv) → Try the interactive demos →

Pillar 3 · Watch

Science & Music — @fluidpianist

On the Qi Wang Science and Piano channel, the science of sound is performed. Frequency and pitch, vibration and resonance, the standing waves on a string and the patterns on a Chladni plate — explained at the keyboard, where physics and music are the same thing. A natural companion to FAVE's Science & Music sessions.

▶ Watch on YouTube

Pillar 4 · SDSU Course

AE 302 — High-Speed Aerodynamics 7 games live

The game-to-teach structure proven at the summer workshop, brought to the university classroom. Compressible flow is famously abstract — shock waves, expansion fans, choked nozzles — so every core concept of AE 302 (Anderson Ch. 7–11) gets an interactive game you play before you derive it: pile pressure waves into a Mach cone, read a supersonic Pitot tube, steer a wedge to shock detachment, trap a shock inside a nozzle, start (or unstart!) a wind tunnel, and creep up on the critical Mach number. Then press ∑ and open the equations knowing exactly what they describe.

Play the course modules →

One program, many ways in

Come to the workshop, play with the demos, or watch the science behind the music — FAVE meets you wherever your curiosity starts.

Summer Workshop Science & Music ▶