First year engineering

willumm

I'm in first year engineering and so far, have found it kind of interesting but damn hard...
Anyone else on here doing engineering and a first year? In fairly lost in physics and mechanics, mainly because there's just not enough tutorials in these.
I did physics for the LC but nothing compares to the stuff we're thrown into in the first weeks.
Does anyone know if many have dropped out? I've heard of one or two but nothing else.
Any advice for keeping on top of the work and getting a reasonable result come Christmas?

SRFCAndyC

get a book for physics and mechanics just keep doing problems in both, thats all the final exam is(well was last year)

Chet T16

Physics is still Lobaskin? Go through the notes and anything thats a derivation, ignore. Write up all the formulae and look over the previous papers, theres actually very little you need to know.

Mechanics frightened the crap out of me, learn off your vectors and trig and do as many examples as possible. Its one of those things where you'll suddenly get it and you'll be fine

ironclaw

Chet T16 wrote: »

Physics is still Lobaskin?

What a man. :pac:

As the previous posters said, just keep on top of the notes and do exam papers. That really is the key. My personal recommendation is in the run up to Christmas, do the past 6 papers for each subject. If you can ace them, your on your way (By the way, thats ace with notes not off the top of your head). Its my preferred way of studying because you can read for hours, and remember nothing. At least with questions, you can connect the dots.

Your at the lucky stage were the exams don't change much and give a general indication of what you should know. Unlike school, its possible to have notes and slides on stuff that will never come up. So its a trade off between knowing everything, or just learning to pass an exam. Thats the key difference between college and school, in school we just learn to pass the exam with little background information. So even if you grasp a little of the background but can understand the procedure, your doing well.

By the way, the 1st semester physics course is designed to bring those with zero physics background to an LC standard, as such if your struggling, I'd be concerned as to why. It might look complicated as the notation would be of a more mathematical background, but it shouldn't feel all new. The labs might be abit abstract though.

If your totally lost, talk to the lecturers. I've never been turned down for help.

Shane L

OP don't worry his notes are a million miles away from what his test is like.What I did last year was do all the problems a week before the exam that were given in the tutorials(at least 1 question in the exam will be similar to 1 of these).A quick run through basically of everything that has been covered and if you know your physics from leaving cert still well your already set up well enough.Don't forget to use the equations he gives you in the exam they most definitely are needed somewhere! ps GO TO ALL YOUR LABS

I hated mechanics.Make sure you do well in your project in case.Its the type of subject you really need to do questions for.If your struggling with things like 3x3 matrices there are online tutorials on youtube.

gubbie

willumm wrote: »

I'm in first year engineering and so far, have found it kind of interesting but damn hard...
Anyone else on here doing engineering and a first year? In fairly lost in physics and mechanics, mainly because there's just not enough tutorials in these.
I did physics for the LC but nothing compares to the stuff we're thrown into in the first weeks.
Does anyone know if many have dropped out? I've heard of one or two but nothing else.
Any advice for keeping on top of the work and getting a reasonable result come Christmas?

There's a book... it's the one that they mention that's in the library. I think it's just bigger then an A5 book, but it's brilliant. Ok it was 2005 when I did it but still, it's really really good. I went from being completely lost to getting an A

Michael Collins

gubbie wrote: »

There's a book... it's the one that they mention that's in the library. I think it's just bigger then an A5 book, but it's brilliant. Ok it was 2005 when I did it but still, it's really really good. I went from being completely lost to getting an A

Halliday, Resnick and Walker? It is, and I think, always was more like A4 size though.

Chet T16

Michael Collins wrote: »

gubbie wrote: »

There's a book... it's the one that they mention that's in the library. I think it's just bigger then an A5 book, but it's brilliant. Ok it was 2005 when I did it but still, it's really really good. I went from being completely lost to getting an A

Halliday, Resnick and Walker? It is, and I think, always was more like A4 size though.

Always lots of copies of HRW for sale too

gubbie

Michael Collins wrote: »

Halliday, Resnick and Walker? It is, and I think, always was more like A4 size though.

Sorry I was actually talking about the Applied Maths one. I can't remember what it was called and my description probably didn't help...

Michael Collins

gubbie wrote: »

Sorry I was actually talking about the Applied Maths one. I can't remember what it was called and my description probably didn't help...

How about Mechanics for A-Level by Bostock?