I wanted to know how difficult is a course in aeronautical engineering compared to other engineering courses?

Question

i am currently in grade 11 and i study in kenya.

i'm doing the new syllabus of gce and i'm having a hard time getting information on how many units of maths i need,which universities offer aeronautical engineering courses in malaysia,australia or canada and increasingly getting demoralised by my peers on the difficulty of doing aeronautical engineering.PLEASE HELP ME.what are the requirements?do i have to work extra hard to do this course compared to other types of engineering?

Answer 1

All engineering requires calculus.

That would be algebra > trigonometry > pre-calculus/analytical geometry > calculus.

I went to Texas A&M and the hardest major there seemed to be Chemical Engineering, with Aeronautical Engineering as the second hardest.  Organic chemistry is tough and Aeronautical Engineering requires more than one year of calculus.

In most engineering fields you have math formulas that are based on physics and derived through calculus that you need to use for your work.  In aeronautical engineering advanced calculus can help you calculate the air flow around the aircraft.

All engineers also need chemistry, physics and many require strength of materials (like aeronautical).  The math you need to use is all based on Newtonian Physics (Newton had to invent calculus to explain physics).  The chemistry and strength of materials will let you know what materials you can make and what their properties are.

My father was a mechanical engineer who worked as a safety engineer.  He got a job with Boeing and started working on aircraft; then he was transferred to the space program and worked on every program form Apollo to the Space Shuttle and the Space Station before he retired.  He concerned himself with the design of back up systems (the shuttle has 3 computers), the escape rocket for the Apollo capsule and safety procedures.  He wasn't an aeronautical engineer, but he was one of an army of engineers who were responsible for the space program.

It depends on what you want to do and what companies are hiring.  In my father's case I believe that he took the mechanical engineering course because it was a general field and he worked for Boeing because they hired him (he had to relocate from the East Coast to the West Coast for the job, and then to Alabama, and then to Houston).

He did not come up with wind tunnel tests and try to create revolutionary new metals or ceramics to be used in spacecraft and airplanes.  Nor did he design spacecraft, but he worked on what went inside.  He once made a joke that the holes in the aluminum struts of airplanes were called lightening holes; but another engineer who heard him talking thought he meant lightning holes.

Engineering is a huge field and the aeronautical specialization is a fairly narrow one, but a necessary one to design the aircraft/spacecraft of tomorrow.

I studied Architecture but I got a fluid and dynamics course that explained the elements of flight and how air provides lift and how to calculate it (you assume that air is water).  My field didn't go beyond the point where the airstream got turbulent though; that takes much more advanced math.  Calculating the volume of a shape like a coke bottle requires calculus; so just calculating the space in an aircraft would require calculus as would the calculations of what happens when the aircraft reaches and passes supersonic speed.  That range is so turbulent though that it was only studied successfully be experiment (trial and error).

- Algebra is the knowledge of how to create a math formula and manipulate it.  It is the start and all higher math is built on it, just like all higher math needs the math below it to be understood.

- Geometry is the study of shapes and how to apply math to them.

- Trigonometry is the advanced study of geometry and involves indefinite shapes like parabolas.

- Analytical Geometry takes Trig and adds more to it giving you the ability to make geometric proofs to prove that various formulas can be converted into other formulas.  It is like algebra on steroids.

- Calculus takes all of the below and synthesis them into one math.  Indefinite shapes are analyzed and indefinite combination volumes can be calculated.  More importantly basic physics only uses algebra and calculates the average acceleration and velocity; you need advanced calculus to calculate the acceleration and velocity at any given moment in time and across a flight path.

Sending a spacecraft all the way to Mars and having it land within an area of a few miles is not hard to do; if you have the advanced math to do it.  It is all based on classical physics invented by Newton and using those same formulas, and you know the variables involved, air friction, gravity, thrust etc.  But, they call it rocket science for a reason because the math to understand it and calculate the spacecraft’s position at any point in time is difficult.  Aeronautical engineering is rocket science; a very difficult and math intensive field.  Understanding how the aircraft shape effects flight is not easy to do, but it can be simulated with advanced math; you can’t expect the computer to do it for you though because you need to tell the computer what to do and let it crank out the numbers.  Computers don’t have original thoughts and are only good are manipulating massive amounts of numbers very quickly.

To be an engineer, any engineer you need physics, and calculus.  To be an aeronautical engineer you need advanced calculus.  To get to calculus you need Algebra, Trig, and Pre-Cal.  Then all of that takes the laws of physics and applies it.  You will also need material science, fluid dynamics, and, statics and dynamics of structures, strength of materials which all involve math.  You will also need chemistry.  The exact requirements vary with the university, but this gives you a good basic idea of what you need.  If you can get calculus in high school and survive it then you probably have the right stuff to be an engineer.

Answer 2

hey i'm in u.s but i was born in kenya and i'm in 11th grade and i want to be an aeronautical engineer i only know one university in u.s that is good in that called embry riddle. and i think you need a lot of phyzo and math but i don't think it's difficult.