What is the most challenging part about taking Mechanical Engineering courses?

Answer 1

Math; especially calculus.

I attended Texas A&M and the University used Chemistry 101 and its calculus courses to weed out students. They made these courses hard on purpose so that fewer students could pass them. In fact when the head of the chemistry department tried to make his chemistry course easier he was fired.

A college isn't required to graduate people, like high school. In fact colleges are proud of how hard it is for their students to graduate. Every degree program has a course of set of courses that are designed to be tough and to weed out the casual students. Just like for any military service Basic Training is made tougher then it has to be to weed out those that can't handle the stress of combat.

Math is to Mechanical Engineering as water is to a flower. All of engineering flows from math. Without the math engineering would be just some experience of a few people. I took an architecture program and had to take calculus courses. I didn't need the calculus to handle the formulas that I needed to make my calculations, but by understanding calculus I knew where the formulas came from and how they were derived. All formulas in physics boil down to E=mc^2. Every single formula needed can be derived from that formula.

Engineering actually requires calculus because calculus handles irregular shapes. For example if you want to calculate the volume of a wasp waist coke bottle you need calculus to figure it out.

My father had a degree in Mechanical Engineering and he used it to get a job with Boeing and worked in the Space Industry. He worked on projects from Apollo to the Space Station. If you want to figure out the orbit for a satellite you can use classical physics; the distance, velocity and acceleration formulas that we all learned in school. But, those formulas are only true for a specific instant of time. When a satellite orbits the Earth it moves faster as it approaches the Earth and it moves slower as it gets further from the Earth. At any point in time you need calculus to find the exact course. This is why to handle classical physics Isaac Newton had to invent calculus too. He needed calculus to do the physics problems.

Answer 2

Well, it is true that Math is the most difficult courses that we have to take, not only for Mechanical, but for ALL fields of Engr. Now, other than the basics subjects, I also find that some high level design course of Mechanical is quite challenging also. In my school, we spend the whole semester to work on a single project. It may sounds little work, but we need to make it professionally with every single details. From the design to calculation and implementation, it take a whole chunk of time.

Answer 3

I agree. Mathematics is probably the most challenging part of Mechanical Engineering. It's the life blood of engineering. I'm going into my second year of mechanical engineering, and so far I've taken 2 terms worth of calculus, and one term of linear algebra. Going into my second year, I have at least one or two more differential equation courses waiting for me.

For me, the second most challenging part would be physics. Especially because physics relies very heavily on mathematics (I think more heavily than chemistry and biology).

Mathematics has always been challenging for me because there are many concepts that are hard to visualize, and I'm quite the visual learner. So there have always been very abstract concepts in mech. eng. as well, (especially in electric circuitry).

But I'd say that if you have a very strong foundation in mathematics, and you enjoy doing math (or at least approach it with a positive attitude), mechanical engineering is not a bad program at all.