Electrical Engineering Electives (Engineering Circuits Course))

[coolzangetsu]

Hi I heard great things about this forum and thought I would post one of my questions here. I am currently a second year Engineering student pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering. So far I have not taken much engineering electives except for thermodynamics and a programming class. So far I have noticed that most classes that I have taken which require prerequisites such as calculus 1 and 2 for physics 1 and 2. I do not know if it is just my school but we barely used calculus in physics except for some simple integration and to prove some theories. So I was wondering for a class such as engineering circuits I am pretty sure differential equations is used a lot but what exactly from differential equations is used the most in Electrical Engineering like for mechanical engineers they use series more frequently to solve problems.

Thank You

 

[thegreenlaser]

Hi I heard great things about this forum and thought I would post one of my questions here. I am currently a second year Engineering student pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering. So far I have not taken much engineering electives except for thermodynamics and a programming class. So far I have noticed that most classes that I have taken which require prerequisites such as calculus 1 and 2 for physics 1 and 2. I do not know if it is just my school but we barely used calculus in physics except for some simple integration and to prove some theories. So I was wondering for a class such as engineering circuits I am pretty sure differential equations is used a lot but what exactly from differential equations is used the most in Electrical Engineering like for mechanical engineers they use series more frequently to solve problems.

Thank You

Probably what you'll do is you start off solving circuits using linear ODE's with constant coefficients, and then you'll use Laplace transforms to remove the need to actually solve DE's, and from there on it will be a ton of algebra with complex numbers (in the Laplace domain). Electrical engineers pretty much always solve circuits in the frequency domain (using Laplace or Fourier transforms) rather than solve differential equations. The ODE method is good to see once, and it's good to know for some things, but once you've done it once you'll mostly solve circuits in the frequency domain (Laplace or Fourier transform). Frequency domain is easier to do and easier to understand in most cases.