How important is electricity and magnetism for mechanical engineering?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>This semester, I am taking Physics 2, which is the electricity and magnetism part of the physics sequence and it is not as "interesting" as when I took the mechanics part of the sequence. I mean, the concepts I can so far "understand," but it's not as deep of an understanding as when I took the mechanics part (Physics 1) because I find it to be very abstract, and non-intuitive; we don't see the electric and magnetic phenomena in a way in which we can think about it and go "oh, yeah, I can see what's going on." For example, something we learned about was the flux of an electric field. It's basically how much of that electric field is going through some area of a Gaussian surface. But, I don't see the direct consequence of it, or why we would want to calculated this "flux" thing in the first place.</p>

<p>I'm kind of going on a rant away from my original question, but did any of you guys also felt this way about Physics 2 when you first took it, that it's not as intuitive as the mechanics portion?</p>

2

<p>I think you’re explaining how 75% of your class is feeling with that first paragraph.</p>

3

<p>I’m in physics 2 right now and also majoring in ME. We just finished electric fields (continuous charges, gaussian surface, etc…), it was definitely harder to understand than physics 1. Definitely not as intuitive. In physics 1 you can use common sense on a lot of the questions, but in physics 2 it’s harder b/c like you said you can’t see it. Imo, magnetic fields were the hardest part, but that was in AP physics, college level physics for us requires calculus so I bet it’s going to be a lot harder, but chances are most of the class is as/more lost than you are.</p>