Mech. Engineering student struggling with Calculus

Page 1 of 2 [ 22 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

Turndown375
Butterfly
Butterfly

Joined: 23 Apr 2018
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 10
Location: Massachusetts

10 Feb 2019, 8:10 am

shortfatbalduglyman wrote:
You wrote that mechanical engineering is the only subject that you are interested in studying

However you could not have tried all of the subjects

Accounting

Trades:. Carpentry, construction, electrician

Take fewer units (do not know if GI bill allows it)

What branch were you in?

What was your military occupational specialty?

Maybe major in a subject related to MOS

What part of ASVAB did you score high on?



When I was 19, a career personality test matched my personality to 20 jobs. All of them in physics and engineering

The easiest, civil engineer

UCSD, structural engineering. Had a f**k load of a hard time

Gained 15 pounds in one quarter, stressing out

Academic probation, five quarters

Nightmare


A fifth year electrical engineering undergrad told me that if she were to have spent as much time as me, studying, she would have gotten straight A's

Got to Structural engineering 110b:. Solid Mechanics. "D"

In that school if you fail one class ("d" or " f")

You have to wait till the next year to take it again

In the meantime, all the other courses you were scheduled to take, has the course you flunked, as a prerequisite



Hire a professional tutor


Took the first two calculus classes, each 2x

The fifth one, three times and flunked


Emotional rollercoaster


:mrgreen:


Ritalin


Join American Society of Mechanical Engineers. See if your college has it

Meet upperclassmen

Get their old finals


Some schools have academic probation and impacted majors


Majors outside STEM require less homework (according to the school).


You wrote that you are not interested in any other subject, but social sciences and humanities involve a lot less work than mechanical engineering


And if the school Expelled you for academic probation (my situation) , you have nothing but sunk costs. Time, money and energy wasted.

That was when I was 22. Tried and failed to commit suicide over it (same explanation as you, but I am just civilian)


Now I am 35 years old and obsessive over it


Every single f*****g day



:roll:


Now I have a fear of failure and too lazy to do anything



Every situation is different


In some cases, persistence

In some cases, quit and do something else

It's splitting fine hairs




But seriously


Stress, strain, pressure, tension, compression, force


In summer school,

Statics

Five weeks long

Monday to Friday

Three hours class a day

Week three, midterm one

Week four , midterm two

Week five, final



:|


No TA


Instructor had official office hours, but I went and he barked at me so loud he scared me away


One student purchased the solution manual


The teaching assistant went over a problem with me

I asked if I could keep the paper

He said no and threw it away

And then I dug it out of the garbage




f**k structural engineering :!:


No of course I haven't tried all of the subjects, but it's the only subject i'm interested in studying. I contemplated Criminal Justice, Numerous medical programs, a few trade schools for mechanics, but they all seem to be more of a passing interest than an actual interest. Mechanical Engineering is always what I've been interested in since I was a kid, and for me anyways it feels right.

I was in the Army as an Infantryman in the 75th Ranger Regiment, which is a prestigious unit, but there isn't really anything I can do with Infantry skills as a civilian unless I do contracting work overseas again, or work for some kind of security company. That isn't really in my best interest though due to some of the injuries I sustained while I served. As far as I'm aware I can take as many or as few classes as I want under the G.I. Bill, the onmly limit is that I only have 36 months of benefits regardless of the number of credits I'm taking. So it's always in my best interest to be full time, at least to maximize my benefit. On the Asvab I did well across the board really, but the GT score, or general technical knowledge was definitely where I shined.

Regarding everything else, I feel you there. It's incredibly frustrating and demoralizing to spend literally your entire day studying a subject and not making any progress towards solving a single problem. Of course, on top of dealing with those frustrations I'm also dealing with various anger and depressiomn issues related to PTSD and such so it's a great time LOL. I'm gonna start looking into a more private tutor as opposed to the tutors at the school since they usually have 2-3 people to help at a time. I'm at a Community College for now, with plans to transfer if/when I make it through the program here. I'm on my 3rd year, but starting so far behind in the math courses is ultimately whay has been holding me up. I may look into the Civil Engineering path, as structures are interesting to me as well, but my true interest lies in designing and optimizing vehicles be it cars, aircraft, whatever.



BTDT
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Jul 2010
Age: 60
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,088

10 Feb 2019, 9:40 am

Well, that is what calculus is all about. When you want to optimize something you usually want to maximize or minimize something. If you can express something mathematically, you use calculus to find that.

Even more powerful is the use of theorems, to establish "ground rules" on what can and can't be done. No sense wasting valuable time and effort on something that obviously can't be done.

Computer simulations are nice, but too much reliance on them means you are just guessing. It is better to have a firm mathematical and physics based background so you have a better understanding of how close you are to what can be achieved.



Prometheus18
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 Aug 2018
Age: 28
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,866

10 Feb 2019, 12:59 pm

Turndown375 wrote:
Prometheus18 wrote:
Turndown375 wrote:
Prometheus18 wrote:
What is it, specifically, that you struggle with about calculus? The central idea in calculus is the infinitesimal limit; once you've spent a large amount of time meditating on this idea, maybe things will fall into place.


Pretty much everything gives me trouble if I’m being honest. I was able to occasionally do some basic limits and derivatives last semester but that’s about it. I don’t seem to be able to retain anything number related whether it’s complex stuff or basic dates. Any time a fraction is introduced, or letters (especially Greek letters) I get completely lost.


Do you understand the concept of slope when it comes to linear equations (y = mx + c)? If so, it may be helpful to just view differentiation as a generalisation of this principle. The derivative of a function is basically just its slope at any given point, assuming that it's perfectly linear at that point. Once you've mastered differential calculus, integral calculus comes at once.

I don't understand why you'd be using Greek letters for elementary calculus, with the possible exception of theta (θ), but maybe it would help to learn the Greek alphabet by heart? You don't seem to have impaired linguistic ability, so this shouldn't be a problem. It helps to emphasize the fact that letters simply serve as placeholders in mathematics. Maybe revisiting the elements of algebra would help with this (things like solving 3x + 2 = 17 for x). Fractions, of course, are just division and should be viewed as such.

It might help if you presented one of your calculus problems to us, from a textbook, along with your attempts at an answer; we might then get a better idea as to where you're going wrong.


I understand that slope measures the rise/run on a graph but im not sure what else that means exactly. I know we have used greek letters for summation, theta is obviously used, and in Physics we use quite a bit of greek letters in various equations. For the most part I understand what the summation is asking for, but when there are other letters and numbers placed ontop or below thats when things go haywire because there are so many letters and numbers to keep track of.

Basic linear stuff like solving for x I'm usually okay with, but again when there are frctions or radicals my knowledge of what to donext dissipates. I have a packet I'm currently attempting to work on in preparation for an exam in the morning tomorrow so I'll try to get a photo uploaded here after breakfast.

The concept of slope is useful because it tells you how quantities change; it's difficult to see this on a graph of y against x, because there's no physically useful interpretation, but it becomes apparent when talking about distance (usually x) against time (usually t). For instance, everybody knows that speed is distance divided by time (miles per hour, metres per second, etc.) And this is easy to read off a linear graph of distance against time (x = mt + c), where speed is just the slope of the graph or m (change in distance over change in time), but when you have a nonlinear function of time (for instance, x = mt²), it's impossible to just divide change in distance by change in time because there is no one answer, but rather, we must "zoom in" to the graph until we get to a point where it is approximately a straight line - at this point, the same way of talking about speed as for a linear graph applies. This is one of the immediate uses of the derivative, which is a technical way of talking about "zooming in" to a graph. The derivative of mt² with respect to t is 2mt, so that we now have a function which will tell us the speed of the particle with the trajectory x = mt² at any point in time.

As for summation, just worry about one thing at a time: the most important part of the summation notation is the expression right of the sigma sign (Σ); given an expression like (a trivial example) Σn² with 3 above the sign and 1 below it, just focus on one term at a time. We start with 1, so work that out (1² = 1), writing it down if necessary, then check the indices around sigma again (2² = 4) and it's not too difficult, if you don't worry about other information unnecessarily, to get the answer (14).



shortfatbalduglyman
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Mar 2017
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,710

10 Feb 2019, 7:03 pm

Ratemyprofessor.com

Choose easier instructor


At UCSD, it appeared that the students that transferred from community college had more problems keeping up academically

If not diagnosed, get one

Get testing accommodation from office of disabled students



MDD123
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 May 2009
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,007

14 Feb 2019, 12:22 am

Good learning material will explain what the greek letters actually mean (constant, variable, proportion, formula), there's no question about what pi means, but some of the others can mean different things.

You've said that fractions and ratios throw you off, maybe you should single that area out. Is it confusing when variables with exponents are in those ratios?

I don't know how much time you spent on khan academy, but they do a good job of separating out the different topics to help you hone in on what you need to learn. I finally got familiar with logarithms (that one really threw me off for the longest time). I'm more of a repetition/hands on learner, I just have to invest time and be patient with myself.

I don't want to make assumptions for you, but I think if you do the practice section on khan academy and try to get 80-100% proficiency on algebra and calculus, you'll get the material a lot better. The site tracks your progress for you, and they mix visual (graph) learning with the algebra based learning, I just can't think of a better place to learn that level of math.

Brilliant.org is a paid site, they teach multivariable calc (among other things), it looks promising and I'm going to try it for myself when I'm done brushing up with khan academy.

If you show an example of what problems you are dealing with, a lot of us would be more than happy to help you with it.

I had issues when I was in school too, difficulty focusing and unwanted memories that kept coming up, maybe that's more to blame than anything else.


_________________
I'm a math evangelist, I believe in theorems and ignore the proofs.


shortfatbalduglyman
Veteran
Veteran

Joined: 4 Mar 2017
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,710

14 Feb 2019, 12:55 am

Mechanical engineering technician

Car mechanic

Computer aided drafting

Land surveyor

Architect

Carpenter

Product designer



oscarinthewild
Pileated woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker

Joined: 16 Feb 2019
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 183

23 Feb 2019, 9:21 pm

calc 123 diff eq lin alg n u good.. if u cant choose another major ..


_________________
“I say that no human being will ever understand me, because I will never…my inner—Cemil—will never be open to anybody. No human will ever understand me. I always play. This is the truth."