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Originally Posted by fireant911
Differential equations for me also... My biggest gripe and disappointment in the whole calculus through DE was the absence of applicability. We were working through mere math problems without ever knowing a real world example of the type of problem that the answer would address. I think, at least in my case, that these higher maths would been much more meaningful should an actual case accompanied the formulas.
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One of my favorite classes was Finite Element methods. The whole point was to understand the method so that when the computers could eventually do it, it would make sense. The 25 MHZ 80386 PC was the top of the line Micro at the time. Some of the "Super" computers and Mainframes could do reasonable FEM at the time.
These days, they sell FEM programs for any PC. But most of the time, I expect the people using FEM don't really understand it. That was a great Grad course and was applied math.
Quote:
Originally Posted by David
Physics was where calculus started to click for me. Using triple integrals to solve a physics problem.
I had one engineering professor tell us that he didn't really understand thermodynamics until he taught it a few times so that made me feel better about it all.
I was fortunate to COOP with an electric utility during school. Between taking thermo 1 and 2, a lazy young engineer at work handed me an old max capacity performance test (real life thermo 2 calculations) and a stack of data we just collected and asked me to do the report. I worked backwards through the old report and figured it out. So I learned thermo 2 before ever taking the class. When I got to thermo 2 the professor was asking me questions! When I got to heat transfer the professor was a retired PhD from the utility I worked at so that was a bonus for me.
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My instructor (He only had a Masters and was working on his phd) was teaching Heat Transfer and I don't think he really understood it. Middle of the semester, he had a wrong answer on the exam and I had to explain to him the real meaning behind the surface to volume ratio. He only checked the "special cases" and concluded they could not be used. I had to go to a wedding and had to do the final early. I spent most of the exam checking my work because one solution was a heat exchanger (shell in tube) 1 meter long but 60 meter in diameter to make it work. Nope, he effed up the numbers. I'm sure he then fixed the exam for the other students.