Friday, January 30, 2009

So far, so good


Grades are starting to roll in, and they seem pretty good. Every class is challenging but nothing seems unreasonable, yet. The biggest nuisance seems to be circuits lab. Six hours of lab write-up chews too much study time, but we really only have six more this semester. The other labs are in a circuit design software called Pspice. My laptop is gradually turning in to a math/science nerds delight. It started with Excel, then Matlab, then Pspice, and now I have Maple, too. I even have software for thermodynamics that automatically pulls up the thermo tables and phase diagrams and solves all kinds of problems using thermodynamic properties. The first new property I learned is specific volume which is nothing more than the inverse of density, we spent today going over enthalpy and specific heat. Next, we learn how to make rabbits appear out of thin air. That's going to be cool!!
Calculus III has been mostly review thus far, so that makes life a little easier. Mechanics of Deformables has just been an extension of Statics. In Statics, you learn to resolve forces about a rigid body like a steel beam, but you neglect all the forces internal to the beam. Now we actually analyze those internal forces that can make a beam fail, or bend, or "deform".
EGRM 215 has mostly been fun with Excel, but now we're getting into some really cool funtions of Matlab. I've been using Matlab for a while now, but there's always so much to learn.
At some point I was planning on keeping this blog less boring, but everything I do in school is boring to anyone who is not studying the same thing. That's all I do!! There's nothing else to talk about. You can see all the cool stuff going on at home on Sonya's blog. Stay tuned here to get your nerd on.

4 comments:

Aunt So-So said...

I know all about statics. Its a drag. I'm so glad we use Bounce to counter the statics. It smells so good and makes everything soft to the touch.

jdrueke said...

I thought the First Law of Thermodynamics was not to talk about thermodynamics. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Man I am funny!

sunglasseshurtmynose said...

Thermodynamics... more like spermodynamics!

LMP said...

Wasn't PSpice the geeky virgin Spice Girl? I can't keep them all straight...