Is This Sophomore Fall Schedule Packed with Programming and Technical Courses?

[eurekameh]

Sophomore fall semester:
Calc 3
Physics 2 (Electricity/Magnetism) / Lab
Statics
Thermodynamics
Engineering Computation
18 credits.
All classes have a recitation component.
What do you guys think?

 

[Jack21222]

That'll probably depend on the level of Thermodynamics. At my university, that is not taken by sophomores. You need to be comfortable with partial differential equations, so it's a junior/senior level class.

Even if it's some sort of lower level thermodynamics, it looks like a very difficult courseload unless you're exceptionally good at math.

 

[flyingpig]

@Jack, now I don't want to take it next year lol hearing that from you. And now I also understand why the average for that course is always 51% or 49% sometimes because no one knows PD lol

 

[Chunkysalsa]

Its basically what I did this semester except I did Diff Eq instead of Thermo. Which for me is a lot easier since I like Diff Eq and I'm good at math.

So a lot of that depends on Thermo and how much work you need to put into it / how good you are at it (if you enjoy it). At our school its like the first class MechEs take so I doubt its got heavy PDE use if its the same for you. Though at my school Physics 2 and ODE are prereqs. So...

I assume Eng. Comp class is a simple numerical methods/matlab type class? Shouldnt be too much a problem. Statics is a bit annoying but not very hard if you stay on top of it (which I didnt ^_^).

 

[eurekameh]

How is calc 3? The last calculus class I've had, calculus 2, was 2 semesters ago. How much of calculus 2 is in calculus 3, if that makes any sense? I had no trouble with calculus 2, but should I go over some stuff during the summer before jumping into calculus 3?

 

[Chunkysalsa]

Part of calc 3 is going back over Calc 1/2 but with multiple variables this time. So you'll need to know your differentiation and integration rules. Generally I didnt see anything too complicated so you should be able to pick things up quite quickly. Might be good to go over some basic product/quotient rules, chain rule and u-substitution. Occasionally I had to use integration by parts or trig subs but I'd had to reference back to remember.Shouldnt be a problem if you understood it well the first time, a quick reference should refresh you memory.

 

[eurekameh]

One more question. The description for Engineering Computation states that I will be learning some basic programming concepts. Why would this be necessary if I'm not a computer science/computer engineering major?

 

[Chunkysalsa]

Programming is an important skill in all technical fields. I'm surprised you didnt have to take any programming classes prior to that. All Engineers, Physicists and even math majors have to take a class in programming in my school.

I'm not to sure about that particular class but my version of that class (we call it Modern Computational Methods) uses Matlab heavily. Its not particularly complicated or refined programming but Matlab has similar syntax to C.

I'm not to sure on the specifics on that, I myself am taking that class in Fall.