What's the toughest ME undergrad course?

[fastcamaross]

Random question for all you MEs out there, but feel free if you also have engineering courses taken in other areas (EE, CE, ChemE, etc), just wondering what is the hardest undergrad level course you have taken. If you choose to post, I'm interested in why is was so difficult for you. I know it really depends on the person but just curious to hear some opinions! Thanks

 

[boneh3ad]

The hardes class for me during my ME degree... electric and electronic circuits! My mind just isn't wired to intuitively do that stuff. I don't find any of the actual ME stuff to be too bad, perhaps because I actually enjoyed it.

 

[Robstradamus]

The most unfun thing I've done in class is to perform FEA aynalisis by hand! Yep, constructing and solving a 20x20 matrix from a seemingly simple truss is no fun at all! But the logic is that we should understand how CAD programs operate FEA simulations...

 

[Jupiter6]

Junior year elective, mechanical metallurgy which was about rolling, punching and extruding. The prof sucked and the theory was over my head, probably still is.

 

[Robstradamus]

Mmmmmm...strain energy and Von Mises max distorion energy prinicple...fun stuff...

 

[kjohnson]

I think the most difficult course mathematically is easily fluid mechanics. It was the first course outside of the math department that relied pretty heavily on differential equations (including partial).

 

[Mech_Engineer]

Control Systems- it relied a lot on understaning of how to intuit transfer functions of components (such as electrical circuitry which I found counter-intuitive in most cases), not to mention the "fuzzy math" that is laplace transforms >:-)

 

[Vadar2012]

Control Systems- it relied a lot on understaning of how to intuit transfer functions of components (such as electrical circuitry which I found counter-intuitive in most cases), not to mention the "fuzzy math" that is laplace transforms >:-)

That's weird, that was my best course. The hardest courses for me were advanced dynamics, engineering analysis, and aerospace propulsion. The latter mainly because the lecturer was lazy and gave us wrong information. The others because there just wasn't enough time to learn them properly.

 

[fastcamaross]

Great to hear some opinions! Pretty sad when I would say my worst class is physics, but haven't had enough ME courses yet to really get a feel. I've only had 4 engineering classes so far, so guess there is a lot of room to get harder.

 

[cmmcnamara]

Same for me with the electric circuits!

 

[jehake12]

Vibrations or Fluid Mechanics

 

[btbam91]

I feel like I am taking it right now. Numerical Methods using MATLAB.

 

[spanky489]

at my university it was probably machine elements, not because its hard to understand or anything but because u needed to know all the equations for every mechanical component invented.

 

[Vadar2012]

I feel like I am taking it right now. Numerical Methods using MATLAB.

Yeah, see my post. We call it Engineering Analysis. We had to do an advanced version too for Aerospace, it was quite tricky.