<p>Can you guys rank these in order of difficulty? Use > or < signs to indicate which is more difficult than which.</p>
<li>Thermodynamics</li>
<li>Propulsion</li>
<li>Signals</li>
<li>Systems</li>
<li>Materials</li>
<li>Structures</li>
<li>Fluid Mechanics</li>
</ol>
<p>by fluid mechanics are you including compressibles and through magnetohydrodynamics?</p>
<p>I think so.</p>
<p>I'm a junior at UIUC in Aerospace Engineering so this is representative of my opinion.
I'll rank them from easiest to hardest</p>
<p>1) Thermodynamics-Not too much math. More intuitive than anything</p>
<p>2) Fluid Mechanics & Propulsion-Momentum, Energy Eqns, COntinuity over and over again, good in fluids means good at propulsion</p>
<p>3) Materials-Haven't taken it yet but heard it's easy</p>
<p>4) Structures-Elasticity is damn hard. It kicked my ass this semester. Get comfortable with Tensor notation as well as the "potato"</p>
<p>5) Signals & Systems-Haven't taken it but have heard bad things. This class is probably the most mathematical</p>
<p>signals and systems (i've only taken one of the three parts) isn't terrible. if you don't know how this stuff is used it seems really abstract. (well, the math is pretty advanced)</p>
<p>fluid mechanics (for reals) is much harder than most anyone can comprehend. incompressible dynamics and applications with magnetic interaction and such rely on tensors and ultimately, cluster-node computing to do cfd... because no one quite understands turbulence. so yes, the fluid mech we are taught in school may not be as hard as systems and signals, but i'm fairly certain understanding fluid motion and interaction is much more involved.</p>
<p>Well, when he wrote "Fluid Mechanics" I was pretty much only talking about an introductory Compressible Flow class. Aerodynamics is harder but I found it much more interesting especially the Panel Mthds and the Thin Airfoil Theory stuff. You need a good grasp of Fourier Series for that part. Even though it's not on your list, "Aerospace Control Systems" is the hardest class I've taken so far. But, in this age of information technology, I believe it is by far the most useful class i'm taking since i would like to specialize in GNC (Guidance, Navigation, and Control). At my dept. a lot of the fluid/structures research is starting to die and we are hiring people like mad who are in Controls/Robotics/Software. I've heard from a friend in Aero at MIT that about 80% of the research in their dept. is in this broad area. I'm planning on taking some CS and ECE courses as well if time permits.</p>