What Courses Are You Taking Spring 2014?

[stephenmw]

Forgot which number semester this is, but I'm taking...

Physics 3-thermodynamics, relativity, quantum stuff, atomic stuff, and some solid state.
Thermo fluids-thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer
Electrical Networks-analysis and design of linear circuits, AC analysis, power calc, threephase circuits, applications of Laplace transform
Digital system design- boolean algebra, k-maps, PLDs, and all that jazz.
Plus a lab for digital systems and a discussion session for networks.

All intro courses to the topics of which all interest me greatly. Foundational knowledge of many interesting topics, I couldn't be more excited :)

 

[Mhorton91]

I'm taking

Pre Calculus
C++ programming
Intro to Psychology
Life Science (Which was a dumb choice, since I just found out that the university I plan to transfer to will require General Biology)

 

[iRaid]

Calculus 3
Intro to industrial engineering (required class for all engineers :(, no interest for an EE)
Electromechanical systems
Economics

Not too worried about this semester, had to self learn calculus 3 because I didn't know it was a prereq for a thermal engineering class (thermodynamics and heat transfer fyi) I took prior (you would think the school wouldn't allow me to register right?)

 

[djh101]

Why didn't anyone tell me pchem lab was going to be so terrible? o_o

 

[heatengine516]

What's so terrible about it? I'm dying to take pchem honestly but it looks like it will always conflict with either EM or QM :(

 

[djh101]

You really get thrown into the deep end, going from learning material in class and applying it in lab to learning about error analysis in class and having to research your lab projects on your own. For our first lab we were given two pages that describe what the lab is, what data we need to collect, what settings to use on the machine, and how to analyze the data. So I was pretty much thrown onto a machine that I've never used before to study a topic that I've never learned. Very independent, for an undergrad course. Plus we only have two weeks per lab to write a 15 page report that focuses mainly on error analysis.

 

[djh101]

There was a post somewhere where someone described it as more work than all your other classes combined. Which looks, so far, to be a fairly accurate statement.

 

[heatengine516]

eesh. 15 page paper every two weeks sounds brutal. Not sure if my school would be similar or not. Thanks for your input though

 

[djh101]

We'll see. I guess this is all just speculation at the moment. Maybe I'll post back after the quarter is over with a nice story. 8)

 

[theWapiti]

New semester, new opportunities.

Calculus II
Physics II
General Chemistry II
Fundamental Programming II (Java)
Modern Astronomy

Hoping for a 3.5 this semester. Goals are important.

 

[Illuvitar]

New semester, new opportunities.

Calculus II
Physics II
General Chemistry II
Fundamental Programming II (Java)
Modern Astronomy

Hoping for a 3.5 this semester. Goals are important.

That seems like a difficult course load but it seems like you had a similar schedule last semester so I am sure you will get that 3.5.

One question though, was it difficult to take Calculus I and Physics I at the same time? At my school you have the option of taking both simultaneously but it is recommended that you take PHYS I concurrently with CALC II. Was there a lot of calculus concepts used in Physics I and if so did that make it difficult?

 

[djh101]

I took mechanics at community college. The book had very little calculus in it and we only had two calculus questions the whole semester (one was, I think, taking the derivative of velocity to get acceleration and the other was a center of mass question that specifically said we had to derive it with the integral formula and were not allowed to use the known constants). Derivatives are pretty much the foundation of calculus and right at the beginning, and you probably won't come across more than a simple derivative in calculus 1. Plus, if your school let's you take them concurrently, that should be a pretty good assurance that there won't be any surprises.

 

[Marco12]

E&M
Partial Differential Equations
Gen Chem 2
E&M lab
Politics of Evolution.

 

[theWapiti]

That seems like a difficult course load but it seems like you had a similar schedule last semester so I am sure you will get that 3.5.

One question though, was it difficult to take Calculus I and Physics I at the same time? At my school you have the option of taking both simultaneously but it is recommended that you take PHYS I concurrently with CALC II. Was there a lot of calculus concepts used in Physics I and if so did that make it difficult?

Last semester I carried four courses for roughly a 3.0:

Calculus I
Physics I
Fundamentals of Programming I
Introductory Discrete Mathematics

Physics I at my university definitely involved more calculus than was mentioned elsewhere. We made heavy use of derivatives (no indeterminate forms, but trig/log/exp derivatives). There were also a selection of integration concept introduced in the last 1/3 of the course. Physics II is chalk full of Calculus I concepts so far.

I took Chemistry I in 2009 so it is taking more effort than I hoped to get going in Chemistry II.

 

[RabbiSnail]

Organic Chemistry 2/Lab
Inorganic Chemistry 1
Intro to Differential Equations
Science, Tech, and Society
Cognitive Sci of Brain Plasticity

 

[nickbob00]

Theoretical physics
Quantum mechanics
Thermal and statistical physics
Skills in physics (problem solving and applications)

 

[Jeff6851]

Waves
University Physics III (Optics, intro to special relativity, thermodynamics) w/ lab
Differential Geometry

 

[astrogal19]

Spring 2014 Graduate student in Physics

Classes:

Quantum Mechanics (Sakurai)
Second sem Electrodynamics (Jackson)

TA:

(1) Trig second sem beg physics (e&m, optics, etc) LAB
(3) Beginning Astronomy LAB

Research:

Astronomy (Cataclysmic Variables), hoping to publish paper in few weeks.
Another paper by end of semester.

 

[milhous]

Intro. to Cryptography (Elective for Math minor) - Trappe/Washington
Electronics Lab
Thermo/Stat Mech. - Gould/Tobochnik
Wave/Particle Theory (Modern Physics) - Harris
ODE - Boyce

 

[Darth Frodo]

My schedule this semester in order of eagerness to study.

Theoretical Mechanics.
Partial Differential Equations.
Operations Research.
Numerical Analysis.
Numerical Computation (MatLab).

 

[amattiol]

Not to bad for my last semester:

Inorganic Chemistry
Physical Chemistry I
Organic Chemistry Research Seminar

djh101, Pchem lab is awful, especially the Quantum Mech. labs as they are mostly theoretical.