Dynamics or Thermodynamics

[Chunkysalsa]

Main Question or Discussion Point

At my school an EE must take either of these courses as a non EE engineering elective (so many Es).

I was wondering with of these is more useful and/or easier to take. I plan on taking these courses this coming summer along with many others so I'd like to take it easy.

Although I find statics very boring so dynamics seems awful to me. Is thermo interesting to some of you? The little exposure I had in Chem and physics was pretty dull although not boring like statics is proving to be.

Note that this themo course is taught by the MechanicalE Department rather than physics.

 

[AlephZero]

Working on dynamics, I tend to think of statics as just a special case of dynamics where nothing moves!

Dynamics will probably be more interesting than statics, and it could be useful to compare mechanical vibrations, resonance, etc with the electrical equivalents. The basic math is the same for both so that may make it "easy".

IMO trying to learn themodynamics without any mechanical dynamics seems strange. You may get confused by too many new concepts that are not easy to relate to the real world.

 

[Chunkysalsa]

Well the reason I find statics so boring is because I've see all of these concepts in Physics, so I'm afraid dynamics will be the same.

We had like 2-3 chapters of thermo in physics (Kinetic theory of gas, Laws of thermo, carnot engines, etc)


I'd also like to mention that my father wants me to take thermo since he runs an A/C company and is interested in the theory behind it all that he really lacks an understanding of. Although this is really a small point, its one I'd like to consider.