Happy Wednesday all!
So, here we are 3 weeks into the school year. Classes are in full swing, projects and student teams are underway, and midterms are fast approaching. The first two weeks were slow and then it feels like everything started happening all at once this week. How are you all getting along?
This semester, I have 4 courses and capstone for a total of 16 credits. Sad to say, this is probably one of the easiest semesters I’ve had over my entire degree. Plus, it helps that the courses I’m taking this semester are pretty interesting! Do you ever wonder what kind of things mechanical engineers learn in school?
MECH 327: Thermal Design. So far, this course has been a refresher on thermodynamics that we covered in MECH 2 (blog post debunking MECH 2 myths coming soon…). We have talked alot about first law, second law, and cycles. Thermo isn’t my favourite subject, but I’m fortunate enough to have an awesome prof this year teaching the course. Shoutout to Pat Kirchen for being being organized, efficient, and having the neatest notes out of any prof I have ever had.
MECH 329: Materials for Mechanical Design. This class is exactly what it sounds like – learning about the materials needed for engineering design. In all honesty, I was most excited for this course because…well, materials is my jam. However, it has been the most disappointing course this semester so far. I was expecting to learn about the actual material selection process for design (ie: 1010 steel vs 1045) steel but instead, we are learning about the chemistry fundamentals (ionic bonds, covalent bonds, etc… Think CHEM 11 or CHEM 12). So, not super impressed so far but hoping that will change!
ELEC 344: Applied Electronics and Electromechanics AKA your “4th year motors course”. As a not-so-avid fan of electrical, I was not excited about this class. I expected more circuit analysis which we already do alot of in our curriculum. The course started off covering the fundamentals of electromagnetism, which was a nice refresher because I don’t think I’ve touched that stuff since PHYS 153 in first year. I just completed the first lab yesterday and it was analyzing the relationship between the position of a metal plunger within a solenoid and the resulting effects on inductance and electromagnetic force. So far, so far. 10/10 would continue going to lectures and labs.
MECH 463: Vibrations. Springs. So many springs.
MECH 45X: Capstone. MECH has a design project component in every year of your studies which is unique to our department. Capstone is just the 4th year design project and it’s year round. My project this year will be to design circuitry housing for a product called Reveal. All I can say about Capstone and any other design project: what you get out of the project is 100% dependent on how much you put into it.
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for a post debunking all the myths about MECH 2…
Until next time,
Ashley