Monday, March 17, 2008

Statics and insecurity

The subject of Statics has intimidated me ever since my good friend Klaus described it to me about ten years ago. The text book, like a physics book, is filled with Greek letters signifying all kinds of abstract notions. The class, now that I'm fully engulfed in it, still intimidates me. Its getting a little less abstract, though. Schools usually insist that physics be a prerequisite, but Thomas Nelson doesn't seem to have that same policy. They should. It's not that you need to know too much physics (you really need to know a ton of trig), but there are a few things that they teach in physics class that you really need. Vector Algebra is a necessity, torque is useful, and experience with relating forces is a big plus. Still, without all that very useful information, I trudged onward. This is what we in the Engineering Student Community like to call "putting the cart before the horse." The good news in all of this after getting our grades back on the first two tests, I got a 93 and 94 respectively. Holy Cow!!!! I need to talk to some actual engineers because I don't feel like an A student. I've heard some folks say that by the time they finished school, they didn't realize they learned anything. I'm sure that's why it takes 3 to 5 years to get a licence. It takes that long to fully put all the pieces together.

2 comments:

Topher said...

I'm still waiting to have learned something...any day now.

Joy said...

Please say we never stop learning something. Engineers are given the tools to figure out the answers, not the answers themselve. Who needs you if all the answers are available?