Despite its great importance and the tremendous efforts that have been made to understand it, turbulence remains a thorny problem. Though great strides have been made and a plethora of predictive turbulence models have been developed, there is only a modicum of guidance available on what is practical and what can be relied upon for design and analysis. This chapter seeks to provide an introduction to turbulence modeling and to make some sense of it. First, the physics of turbulence are described briefly. Then, different mathematical approaches used to predict turbulent flows are outlined, with focus on their essence, their ability to predict correctly, and their turnaround time. Next, widely used, single-point closure models for Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations are summarized, with some reference to the principles used to develop them. Finally, an appraisal is given of the current state-of-art models, in order to provide guidelines on their usefulness. The chapter concludes with comments on transition prediction. Nomenclature b ij anisotropy tensor C p constant pressure specific heat d shortest distance to the wall k turbulent kinetic energy or thermal conductivity P rate of turbulent kinetic energy production