Recent content by Cvan

Airplanes don't want turbulent flow, otherwise they can stall. The dimples on a gold ball work to increase the Reynolds number of a flow that will become turbulent, effectively triggering the laminar to turbulent transition sooner. For a golf ball, this leads to a smaller effective space where...

As a student I'll say that learning some LaTeX has been great for my long papers, but the effort was wasted on shorter ones earlier in my education. I use it for all of my lab reports and any homeworks that are supposed to be presented 'nicely'. I'm going into senior year of my mechanical...

They're different tools for different things. There's some overlap, but comparing the two is like comparing a bread knife with a steak knife. MATLAB's power is in its matrix handling ability (hence MATrix-LABoratory), even though it is commonly used for 'dirtier' computational programming...

6 equations and 7 unknowns? You don't declare B_y in your initial syms statement, but it probably gets declared when it's used below. Maybe the coffee hasn't kicked in for me yet so feel free to tell me I'm an idiot :D, but that's what pops out to me right now.

I'm not a mathematics major, but I don't think there is. I mean, if you've been exposed to multivariable calculus, then you should have learned that a limit can only be a limit if it's the limit coming from all directions. It's the same thing in complex differentiation. The limit has to be...

To answer the main question I think you asked: "how to feel motivated"--concern yourself with your studies. Don't even think about the end-game in industry if engineering is what you want to do. Know what keeps me motivated? Genuine interest in the subject material. Personally at my...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=DSolve[3y''[t]%2By'[t]%3D0,y,t] As an example.

Just do a least squares regression on the data set, and get a function for y(x). Then plug in values of x to the function you get and there's your interpolated outputs!

12 and 24 hour clocks use the format: HH:MM, where H is an hour digit and M is a minute digit. Don't subtract the two times like that. 15:00 - 09:00 = 6:00 Six hours. There's 60 minutes in an hour, so multiply this by 60 minutes per hour. 6 hour*\frac{60 minute}{1 hour} = 360 minutes You...

The electrons are just there. Think of the circuit as a system of pipes. The pipes are completely full with water, but without the battery connected the water doesn't move. Now, what happens if you suck on one side of the pipe (cause a pressure difference between the 'beginning' and 'end')...

Nuclear engineering deals primarily with the designing and upkeep of nuclear power systems (ie. nuclear reactors). Mechanical Engineering deals with (typically) smaller scale components of those larger systems and the integration of those components (rather than the design of that large system...

Assuming that by "worm gear" you mean "worm", and by "helical gear" you mean "worm gear" (if not, disregard this because I've misinterpreted your question; the terminology for worm drive mechanisms isn't straightforward so I think this is what you're asking about). The worm can transmit power...

If I recall my intro. to spacecraft performance//orbital mechanics, Kepler himself was essentially a strictly observational scientist, and derived his laws from hard astronomical observation (independent of the masses of the bodies in orbit).

Every motor is different. In general, if you don't trust manufacturer's specifications for rpm versus voltage or max torque or what have you, your best bet is just to create a quick empirical fit for your motor's speed as a function of voltage AT the load that you intend to use.

I don't think typical "physics"(mechanics is probably more accurate for the kind of book you're looking for) books are at all 'abstract'. You have to understand the theory behind the operating principles of forces, frames, analysis of differential elements, etc; before you go and start making...