Vibrations: Hell of a Class, My Teacher is Awesome!

[Cyrus]

Man, that class is really insanely hard.

Excuse me, while I go cry.

My teacher has office hours the day before its due from 3-6. Basically, the ONLY way you can solve the homework, is by getting help from him, because its that hard. He gave us a problem and everyone got stuck, then he said, you should do a taylor series expansion for a small angle approximation...everyone was like you expected us to do WHAT!?

Oh well, he is still a freaking awesome teacher. But dammit it's hard material...someone shoot me...no seriously, shoot me now, right now. :!)

/rant.

 

[tribdog]

so the beach boys had it wrong?

 

[Kalimaa23]

He gave us a problem and everyone got stuck, then he said, you should do a taylor series expansion for a small angle approximation...everyone was like you expected us to do WHAT!?

In what year are you? I would expect that this would be taught in a freshman year...

 

[Cyrus]

Uhhh,...nooo (actually, hell no). Sure, we did that crap in calculus, and we do it all the time in derivations of equations, like Navier stokes, or Fourier's law etc; but, this was the first time I have seen a homework where it was assumed for you cancel out higher order terms and then use a talor series expansion. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE got that problem right. And he never even mentioned using the talor expansion in class. I guess that part was painfully obvious, to him.

We have a test thursday, Sh!t...

This is by far the hardest, and best, class I have taken.

P.s. I'm not a phyiscs major Dimitri, so maybe they do that stuff in Physics, we didn't.

 

[Kalimaa23]

My apologies, I assumed that you were a physics student. In that case I can understand the culture shock.

 

[Cyrus]

My apologies, I assumed that you were a physics student. In that case I can understand the culture shock.

Yeah yeah, us 'dumb' engineers, what can I say

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

Uhhh,...nooo (actually, hell no). Sure, we did that crap in calculus, and we do it all the time in derivations of equations, like Navier stokes, or Fourier's law etc; but, this was the first time I have seen a homework where it was assumed for you cancel out higher order terms and then use a talor series expansion. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE got that problem right. And he never even mentioned using the talor expansion in class. I guess that part was painfully obvious, to him.

We have a test thursday, Sh!t...

This is by far the hardest, and best, class I have taken.

P.s. I'm not a phyiscs major Dimitri, so maybe they do that stuff in Physics, we didn't.

I'm sure you'll do fine after a couple more weeks, by then you'll think of using things like taylor series and other "neat tricks" more often. I find in my engineering classes that their way of problem solving is different than in physics classes. They are usually more "traditional" in their approach. In some cases, engineers take the long route just because they know it will work, even though they can see a hint of a shortcut in some cases (but they usually don't choose to pursue it)--I'm thinking of a couple problems in my fluid mechanics class when I say this. I suggest to try to get more inventive, even if you think it would take some review on some old thing you learned a long time ago. It may take some of your time away, but it will help expand your scope. By the way, vibrations are freakin' awesome! I've probably not taken the type of class you're in right now, but hot damn, Fourier analysis is cool, and so is quantum mechanics. I still want to figure out how to use those legandre polynomials, hermite polynomials, and bessel functions to solve various partial differentials, which you're probably pretty familiar with by now...

 

[Cyrus]

Fluids was easy compared to this course

 

[Cyrus]

I'm sure you'll do fine after a couple more weeks, by then you'll think of using things like taylor series and other "neat tricks" more often. I find in my engineering classes that their way of problem solving is different than in physics classes. They are usually more "traditional" in their approach. In some cases, engineers take the long route just because they know it will work, even though they can see a hint of a shortcut in some cases (but they usually don't choose to pursue it)--I'm thinking of a couple problems in my fluid mechanics class when I say this. I suggest to try to get more inventive, even if you think it would take some review on some old thing you learned a long time ago. It may take some of your time away, but it will help expand your scope. By the way, vibrations are freakin' awesome! I've probably not taken the type of class you're in right now, but hot damn, Fourier analysis is cool, and so is quantum mechanics. I still want to figure out how to use those legandre polynomials, hermite polynomials, and bessel functions to solve various partial differentials, which you're probably pretty familiar with by now...

Yeah, I won't lie. The class is damn cool. But were engineers, so we do stuff like vibrations of systems. That homework no one could solve, it has to do with a car suspension. You can effectively change the spring constant through the geometry of the setup. You can also get equations of motion through the energy equations, gravity is really a spring, just tons and tons of great engineering stuff. Were going to go into the lagrange approach to solving systems eventually. If he teaches 672, (non-linear vibrations), I might take it with him, but that's a graduate course for down the road. But this guy is freaking smart as hell.

 

[Pyrrhus]

Hey cyrus, what book are you guys using?

You know being a civil, all i learned about Vibrations was in my Dynamics class, mostly particle vibration and a small intro to rigid bodies vibrations.

 

[Cyrus]

Mechanical Vibrations by RAO.

Very very heavy into DE, laplace transforms, and linear algebra.