Aerodynamics is the central course of an aerospace engineering degree — the study of how air behaves around wings and bodies, and therefore of how anything flies. The statewide description covers basic aerodynamic analysis of wings and bodies in incompressible and compressible flows, including airplane performance, stability and control.
It is carried by six Florida public institutions at 3 credits, more than any other aerospace-specific course in the state.
⚠ This is where the discipline gets mathematically hard. Aerodynamics is applied fluid mechanics with the simplifications removed, and students who arrived at fluid mechanics with shaky vector calculus meet the consequences here.
Named on the Aerospace Engineer career path in this repository. It is the gateway to aerodynamics, performance and design roles, and a prerequisite for propulsion, flight dynamics and the capstone sequence. In Florida it leads toward launch vehicle and airframe work on the Space Coast and toward the defence and simulation employers around Orlando.
Four institutions call it Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, two call it Aerodynamics, and the state calls it Beginning Aerodynamics. ⚠ This is branding, not divergence — the subject is the same everywhere and the textbook is usually the same book. Register by number and do not read the title variation as a signal.
The University of Central Florida runs one of the largest aerospace programmes in the state and does not appear among this number’s six carriers. That is not a gap in its curriculum: UCF numbers the same course EAS3101 Fundamentals of Aerodynamics, at 3000 level, and carries an honours section of it as well.
⚠ This is a level twin — the same subject positioned a year earlier — and Florida does it routinely (EGN2312 and EGN3311 for statics, EGN2322 and EGN3321 for dynamics). Both are upper-division, so nothing is lost in transfer, but a UCF student searching the state record for EAS4101 will not find their own university, and a transferring student should send the syllabus rather than assume the numbers line up.
The statewide gate is simply “fluid mechanics”, and that understates it. This course assumes you can work comfortably with control volumes, potential flow and the vector calculus underneath them. If fluid mechanics was a struggle, revise it before the term rather than during it — the aerodynamics sequence does not slow down for it.
Much aerospace work is subject to ITAR and EAR export control, which in practice restricts many roles — and some laboratory and project work — to U.S. persons, and a great deal of defence work additionally requires a security clearance that takes months to obtain. This is not a course requirement, but it is a career requirement, and it is better understood in the second year than after an offer.
A Professional Engineer licence is uncommon in aerospace — most of the work falls under the industrial exemption, and employers hire on degree, project record and clearance. ⚠ It is still worth sitting the FE examination in your final year: it is inexpensive then and expensive to recreate later, and it keeps open a move into consulting or civil-adjacent work. Under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes, an approved engineering curriculum needs four years of experience toward the PE and an approved engineering technology curriculum six.
Generated September 18, 2026 · Updated September 18, 2026