how hard of a subject is mechanical engineering in college?
December 30th, 2008
i am currently in high school and i am thinking about going into mechanical engineering in college.
and i was wondering, how hard is mechanical engineering?
Fairly hard,
Have you had calculus or physics, or chemistry and how did you do in those classes. That will give you and idea of how you will do as an engineer.
All the formulas you use in college will be related to each other through calculus so you need to understand it to see that relationship. Also some more advanced functions like calculating the area of an irregular volume will require calculus.
Physics is the core to understanding our universe and how things work, so an understanding of it is critical. You need to be able to understand and calculate the forces at work in a structure or a material, the safety factor, and the point of failure. This testing can be done by machines, but it is quicker to do the math then you can custom design the material.
Chemistry is how things come together and react with each other. It goes beyond knowing that Sodium burns in water it involves what elements are added to metals to increase the hardness and how much. The difference between steel and iron is 6% carbon and that is the difference from a steel bar you can bend with your hands or one that can be used to hold a huge weight.
My father was a Mechanical Engineer; he became a Safety Engineer for Boeing working on contract for NASA. He was involved in the space program from the Apollo Project up to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. He was literally a rocket scientist.
Clearly computer programming can be useful and knowledge of technical writing is a must to create and read your reports; so that means you need English as well. A famous saying goes “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” This means that a basic understanding of history will be a requirement as well. Another famous expression is “A picture is worth a thousand words.” In the field of engineering that means a technical drawing so a drafting course would be a requirement so you can explain your ideas.
I went to Texas A&M and knew a lot of engineers, from them I found the two major funk our course for engineers; Calculus and Chemistry. In fact when the head of the chemistry department tried to make his course easier he was fired.
High School requires that an average student can graduate. College requires that the graduates will be able to perform in the real world. There is a world of difference between the two; colleges take pride in the amount of students they flunk out. It shows they have higher standards and makes a degree from that university worth more. In the case of Texas A&M the recommended that all engineers take a freshman Calculus class and a Freshman Chemistry course. Both courses had a required lab and were famous for being weed out courses to get rid of the weak students. If you didn’t have enough math to take calculus then you would take enough courses until you could. This would add more time to your degree plan and so take longer, but you wouldn’t be penalized by the college for doing that.
I applaud your interest in Engineering and I wish you luck. You are smart enough to ask questions now as to what you should be doing for your future career plans. I strongly suggest you take a few advanced placement courses. Those courses will give you an idea of what college would really be like; they will also look nice on your transcripts to the admission board. Colleges also like to see well rounded students and that means involvement in extra-curricular activities, so join a club. It doesn’t have to be the chess club or the math club, but if you belong to another group or club then you will get a well rounded experience, which will help you in college.
In conclusion I suggest you take an interest in the following courses (in order of their value):
- Advanced math; calculus
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Drafting
- English
- History
Posted in mechanical engineering schools
If you focus, concentrate and accept that everything you are learning will be valuable soon even if you can't see its application yet, then engineering school will agree with you. If you think you'll be spending more time in the pub than studying, it may not be the best avenue.
References :
Fairly hard,
Have you had calculus or physics, or chemistry and how did you do in those classes. That will give you and idea of how you will do as an engineer.
All the formulas you use in college will be related to each other through calculus so you need to understand it to see that relationship. Also some more advanced functions like calculating the area of an irregular volume will require calculus.
Physics is the core to understanding our universe and how things work, so an understanding of it is critical. You need to be able to understand and calculate the forces at work in a structure or a material, the safety factor, and the point of failure. This testing can be done by machines, but it is quicker to do the math then you can custom design the material.
Chemistry is how things come together and react with each other. It goes beyond knowing that Sodium burns in water it involves what elements are added to metals to increase the hardness and how much. The difference between steel and iron is 6% carbon and that is the difference from a steel bar you can bend with your hands or one that can be used to hold a huge weight.
My father was a Mechanical Engineer; he became a Safety Engineer for Boeing working on contract for NASA. He was involved in the space program from the Apollo Project up to the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. He was literally a rocket scientist.
Clearly computer programming can be useful and knowledge of technical writing is a must to create and read your reports; so that means you need English as well. A famous saying goes “Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.” This means that a basic understanding of history will be a requirement as well. Another famous expression is “A picture is worth a thousand words.” In the field of engineering that means a technical drawing so a drafting course would be a requirement so you can explain your ideas.
I went to Texas A&M and knew a lot of engineers, from them I found the two major funk our course for engineers; Calculus and Chemistry. In fact when the head of the chemistry department tried to make his course easier he was fired.
High School requires that an average student can graduate. College requires that the graduates will be able to perform in the real world. There is a world of difference between the two; colleges take pride in the amount of students they flunk out. It shows they have higher standards and makes a degree from that university worth more. In the case of Texas A&M the recommended that all engineers take a freshman Calculus class and a Freshman Chemistry course. Both courses had a required lab and were famous for being weed out courses to get rid of the weak students. If you didn’t have enough math to take calculus then you would take enough courses until you could. This would add more time to your degree plan and so take longer, but you wouldn’t be penalized by the college for doing that.
I applaud your interest in Engineering and I wish you luck. You are smart enough to ask questions now as to what you should be doing for your future career plans. I strongly suggest you take a few advanced placement courses. Those courses will give you an idea of what college would really be like; they will also look nice on your transcripts to the admission board. Colleges also like to see well rounded students and that means involvement in extra-curricular activities, so join a club. It doesn’t have to be the chess club or the math club, but if you belong to another group or club then you will get a well rounded experience, which will help you in college.
In conclusion I suggest you take an interest in the following courses (in order of their value):
- Advanced math; calculus
- Physics
- Chemistry
- Drafting
- English
- History
References :
Depends on your mathematical aptitude and your ability to grasp things spatially. I wish I would have gone into it since I have studied it more. My degrees in anthropology and psychology are pretty much worthless.
If you have a handle on mathematics…go for it.
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If you enjoy it, and find it stimulating, it will be a worthwhile challenge. I'm not going to say it will be easy, but you will be motivated to get through it, and it won't seem too hard.
If you don't enjoy it, you will find it next to impossible to sustain over four years of college. And think of the rest of your life.
P.S. I have undergraduate and graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering.
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Ok…first off, no matter what you did in high school, college will most always be harder. The teachers will always help you out when you ask, although you may need to schedule an appointment.
Next, I just graduated with my Bachellors in Mechanical Engineering, so I can tell you that if you put in the effort on a few of the major classes (probably sophomore year) then you will almost coast the rest of the way. Study your hardest with Calculus and Differential Equations. And Newton's Laws are a MUST! Those three things almost completely encapsulates the foundation of my entire senior year.
All it takes is some hard work and maybe a couple of long nights doing homework. For some classes like Statics, Dynamics, and Thermodynamics it may take you a bit to understand the concepts but they will come in time and you'll see homework hours go from 6 hrs to maybe 2 (in those classes). I frequently had problems in junior and senior year that took at least a half hour to do when you know what you're doing. And in Differential Equations, there were some problems that took my instructor a week (three hour long sessions) to solve and explain in class.
But dont be fooled, it's not all hard work. There are a lot of fn projects along the way. And mechanicals are almost always guarenteed to find a job. They can do almost any other type of engineering work, though not always as proficiently. I've done civil, electrical, and chemical at work on co-ops, and my senior project dealt with biomedical, industrial, mechanical, and electrical engineering. Plus eningeers make really good teachers. Especially math teachers. So there is always a plethora of opportunity.
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Personal Experience – I just earned my BSME.
look man mechanical engineering is one of the oldest science in the history so the basics are constant some of courses related to the basics of the material and it's properities others sppeks about material processing others speek about design and some of the courses related to the temperature apllications like theromdynamics and heat transfere all of these courses and others are not hard but need some fundamental like a good understanding of mathematics, physics, chemistry,
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