It feels like M.E. undergrad degree is a JOKE

[xxChrisxx]

How, in any way, can you justify a calling a ship floating in a non defined 'bucket of water' a 'practical situation'? Hint (It just isn't. It's hypothetical bollocks.)

A practical situation regarding buoyancy and stability is:
We have requirement for a navigation buoy with a focal height of 7m to be stable in a port with fast flowing current (peak current of 5 knots) to a depth of 40m at high tide. We have a 2m diameter float with 4.5Te of gross buoyancy. The buoy will have an elastomer float, steel central structure and aluminium superstructure. All proposed fasteners are 316 stainless. The customer also has a requirement that 32mm chain must be used as it's whathe has lying around.

Does out existing largest float meet the requirements?
Will the buoy meet stability criteria?
Will the buoy last for a service life of 10 years?

The customer is looking at competitors rotomoulded buoys (a cheaper but less durable alternative) so there is a drive for costs to be low as possible to meet a 30% margin. We will never match on price, but the salesman must be able to sell our buoy as a better alternative.

That ^_^ is a real life question for a man with money wanting to purchase a buoy.

 

[gulfcoastfella]

Everyone, stop trying to set Curl straight. He clearly wants to sit on a mountain top, on a golden throne with 'Physicist' inscribed on it and have the lowly engineers bring him offerings of worship and adoration. He's joyfully full of himself; he's pretending that he wants to be convinced that engineering is a worthwhile enterprise, when in reality he's just fueling the fire to see how big he can make it. This guy is a waste of anyone's time, online or off.

 

[Travis_King]

Oh, well I don't know about that...I have had fits of hubris in my lifetime, as I'm sure most of us have. Engineers, physicists, mathematicians, many of us have had the shared experience of quickly grasping abstract concepts and watching as our peers struggled to understand the fringes. He is somewhat right, that undergraduate study doesn't teach engineers how to design cargo ships. Many people go into school and engineering with the idea that they will learn how to build entire planes and only later in their studies discover that engineering school teaches you the fundamentals, and prepares you to think like an engineer. Granted, some schools have more challenging curriculum than others (I know some of my aero classes were pretty rough), but when one goes into it thinking they will learn to design buildings and they spend a week analyzing a simply supported beam, or a one dimensional airfoil (whatever that means lol) there is a certain degree of dissillusionment.

Bottom line, Curl, Engineering school is there to teach you how to become an engineer and provide you with the literature and resources to construct a foundation of experience that you can use to build your personal career on. It provides a place where like-minded people can go to learn the field and work together to get a better understanding of the concepts.

No one is going to teach you how to build a plane from scratch. If they could, they wouldn't be teaching, they would be building planes from scratch.

 

[skaboy607]

Why are people still replying to this OP? He isn't going to listen and he clearly doesn't understand what engineering i and how it is applied. I too like to learn where things come from to get a better understanding of the problem but I am no mathematician and I'm happy with that. I also don't remember everything I've learned in my years of studying, however I know where to find it and when I do find it, I will remember how to apply it. I'm not the smartest person in the world but guaranteed I'll be a better engineer than this OP.

 

[cw1690]

go work for a suppermarket

 

[samyakg891]

an engineer learns terms and expressions in class but puts it in real life when he joins a company. but Unfortunately u could not did d same

 

[OldEngr63]

Go tell your profs that their courses are jokes. I'm sure that they will be most interested in your evaluation, and will do their best to up-grade the course content to challenge you. They really do not want you to be bored! Tell them that their classes are way too easy and that they need to increase the quantity of material in their courses, cover more and at much greater depth, so that you will have a chance to really learn something!

In the 17 years that I taught ME, I never heard your complaint about any of my classes. If you have gone to a poor school, and there are plenty of them around, that was a bad choice that you will have plenty of time to regret in the future. You will be in a better position to evaluate when you find out whether you really did learn anything or not, and whose fault it was.

 

[jehan60188]

where are you studying?
Chances are it's not Purdue, or MIT
go study there, and see if it's a joke.
job prospects? Do you have any?

more importantly, do you have any interesting in creating something? If you want to create something, then you have to know the concepts covered in your program.
an undergrad degree gives you awareness about concepts that are important, but you can not be taught how to create something. if you are not a creator, then a degree in engineering is wasted on you.
consider taking a career aptitude test to see if there are any fields better suited towards your interests

 

[Antiphon]

I fully support Curl in his harsh evaluation. When I got an engineering degree in the 80's at a major state university every course was very difficult and the texts went way deeper into the material than there was time to cover. I kept nearly all these books and still use them as engineering references. I knew I was getting my money's worth.

Some colleges water down the curriculum to keep from losing enrollment. You're probably in one of these.

Curl, you're in the right degree but the wrong college. One of the big ten or PAC ten or ivy league engineering schools would have done right by you.

 

[jehan60188]

Go tell your profs that their courses are jokes. I'm sure that they will be most interested in your evaluation, and will do their best to up-grade the course content to challenge you. They really do not want you to be bored! Tell them that their classes are way too easy and that they need to increase the quantity of material in their courses, cover more and at much greater depth, so that you will have a chance to really learn something!

In the 17 years that I taught ME, I never heard your complaint about any of my classes. If you have gone to a poor school, and there are plenty of them around, that was a bad choice that you will have plenty of time to regret in the future. You will be in a better position to evaluate when you find out whether you really did learn anything or not, and whose fault it was.

due to financial reasons, I can only afford a "poor school"- Northern Illinois University is not competitively ranked, by any means. but the students there are smart! and I have aspirations.
any tips on improving my general knowledge, as well as my job prospects?
best case scenario- I want to have my own shop, where I develop soft robots, UAVs, and whatever else interests me. I know I'll need more than a basic Mechanical Engineering degree for that!
worst case scenario- I make sketches in solidworks/ all day for 40 years. I wouldn't be ok with that!
I definitely want to get my EIT and PE!

I guess my question is, how do I know what I need to know?

 

[Curl]

Curl, you're in the right degree but the wrong college. One of the big ten or PAC ten or ivy league engineering schools would have done right by you.

I am at a PAC-10 school...

any tips on improving my general knowledge, as well as my job prospects?
best case scenario- I want to have my own shop, where I develop soft robots, UAVs, and whatever else interests me. I know I'll need more than a basic Mechanical Engineering degree for that!
worst case scenario- I make sketches in solidworks/ all day for 40 years. I wouldn't be ok with that!
I definitely want to get my EIT and PE!

I guess my question is, how do I know what I need to know?

Looks like your "best case scenario" is similar to mine. Sad news is, it takes a lot for that to happen. It's not even about how much you know or how much talent you have, it's all about having hookups, opportunity banging on your door, etc.

 

[Travis_King]

You also can't expect to learn everything at school that you'll need to know in order to start your own company that deals in some of the most cutting edge technologies. The information is out there, there are seminars, articles, published papers, expo's, etc.

 

[xxChrisxx]

best case scenario- I want to have my own shop, where I develop soft robots, UAVs, and whatever else interests me. I know I'll need more than a basic Mechanical Engineering degree for that!

The thing you are looking for is experience.