Two questions: Physics/Engineering

Question

1st- What do i need to know to be an engineer, specifically mechanical.

2nd- Im gonna take physics and i wanna know what i will do and what is it like.

Answer 1

first off i would like to say that i hope you know what engineers are trained for. i had a lot of friends who went to college because they thought it was what they were suppose to do after high school. dont be that person. i hope this will help you understand what purpose engineers serve. in short, an engineers job is to describe how something works. it is much better than the trial and error method.

engineering is using known relationships to predict how something works. when you can apply known relationships you can predict how something will work without actually building it. this eliminates a lot of the trial and error. no one wants to build a bridge and drive across it to see how much weight will make it collapse. if you can describe a relationship with math, then you can figure out the most efficient way to do something. the best example of engineering is using minima and maxima. maxima is level one calculus. it can be used to find the best way to perform any relationship that can be described mathematically. mechanical engineers use similar methods to explain how a mechanism will operate or how physical stress will affect a structure.

short example of applying engineering to find the best way to arrange a fence to enclose an area (warning Calc101 content):

if i had one hundred feet of fence what is the biggest area that can be enclosed? the fence will be arranged with for sides to form a rectangle. what is the largest area that can be enclosed and what length and width should be used to achieve this. apply known relationships for a rectangle.

area formula-->L*W=A

perimeter formula--> 2L+2W=P=100

the fence that is not used for length will be the width.

solve for one unknown using perimeter formula--> 2L=100-2W

Simplify--> L=50-2W

use it to substitute for L -->(50-2W)*W=A

Simplify--> 50W-W^2=A

apply derivative--> 50-2W=A

Set equal to 0 to find maxima--> 50-2W=0

solve--> W=25

the biggest area that can be made from 100ft of fence will be a square with W=25 and L=25. that will be 625 sqft.

Answer 2

***Mech-E***

It depends on what type of Mech-E you want to be. Some engineers work in industrial settings that deal with product flow, heat transfer, fluid flow, ect.. Other engineers are in the design field that optimize mechanical devices.

But in mechanical engineering the main fields that are covered at the Collegiate level are:

Statics

Dynamics

Thermodynamics

Machine Design

Stress Analysis

Fluid Dynamics

Controls

***Physics***

It depends on the Physics course. There are courses that deal with outside forces such as gravity, friction, tension, spring forces ... ect.  Other physics classes deal with magnetism and electricity.

Either way there are two ways of teaching the subject. One way is using regular arithmetic and some algebra. The other is much more powerful but involves calculus and deferential equations. Obviously the first is easier and the second can be quite tedious. Both though are vector based which means you will need to be able to grasp vector concepts.

Answer 3

1) You'll be taking a lot of math and physics in addition to your engineering classes. Math up to diff equ at least. your school will let you know what classes.

2) physics 1 is just basic mechanics, motion, energy and forces. And eventually you will take a calculus based physics course.

Answer 4

You'll learn everything you need to know in engineering school. Expect to do a lot of math, especially calculus. Physics I is very easy and interesting. It's just basic concepts and formulas and you could get by it with just knowing algebra.