I am horrible at following directions and listening. I don’t like algebra and any class that involves algebra because when a teacher explains things with algebra, its confusing (i’d rather learn the concepts). However, i’m actually very good at math, especially the more challenging it gets (i’m more interested so i try harder i guess). Usually if i understand a concept i can figure out the math myself; i was really good at geometry because shapes are pretty easy to understand. I also really love biology and art. Would i make a good engineer? I’m also considering majoring in math.
I don’t know why you would consider any math-heavy field of study if you absolutely hate algebra. 90% of solving calculus or differential equations problems (and thus engineering problems) is algebra. Also, the further you go along into any of the physical sciences, the more the physical principles are illustrated by the mathematics. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “the concepts” in your post, but usually the fundamental principles are rooted in mathematics or require mathematics in order to become useful.
I can use algebra to solve complicated stuff as long as I understand it. But I can’t follow when other people do algebra. My chemistry teacher would just write equations on the board and show us where to plug in the numbers and not teach any actual chemistry. I would always mess up somehow even though it should be simple but if I understood the concepts I could probably make up the equations myself.
I don’t like algebra because it is tedious. Assigning letters to concepts kind of makes you distracted from the actual concept. Science is so cool and to condense it into a few equations just seems wrong. However I think math is really amazing too in its own way. I definitely prefer math over science but in high school science is more critical thinking while math is just following the same procedure over and over.
But this is only true of a minority of “concepts.” There are a handful of fundamental principles in most physical sciences, such as the conservation laws (conservation of mass, momentum, energy, charge, etc.). These have a description in words, but most other scientific concepts fall out of the mathematics of working with these first principles, and you have to perform these mathematics to make them useful in any practical way. Engineering is essentially a type of applied physics, and in order to apply physics, you have to translate the ideas into useful formulae.
I, too, find algebra to be tedious. However, it is often a necessary tedium. Using strictly numerical values obfuscates the actual physics. If instead you use variables and don’t substitute numbers, it is much, much easier to see (or calculate, as the case may be) the relationships between the variables and the implications that has on the physical situation.
Science, in one sense, is equations. The entire point of science is to use observations of the world around us and our knowledge of mathematics in order to translate the physical observations into useful mathematical models of varying degrees of complication. Mathematics is the language of science. You cannot decouple the two.
So are you saying that they don’t actually know why the relationships are the way they are? Because that’s gonna drive me crazy. I need to know why everything before i even look at an equation. I can handle a certain amount of algebra i think but if all being an engineer is is solving calculus problems then that sounds boring and i’ll pass. I imagine it as more a lot of thinking about and experimenting to find a particular shape or concept you could use for whatever you’re designing and then using calculus to figure out the optimal dimensions and what not.
Most engineering jobs do not require the use of calculus on a day to day basis. A typical BS/MS engineer will utilize computer codes that have all of the advanced math embedded in the code. The engineer simply inputs dimensions/parameters and the code does all/most of the heavy lifting. A good engineer will check (or spot check) the outputs from these codes though. There may be times when you need to fix/update a piece of code or create something new and have to use some advanced math, but this is usually not a frequent scenario. Typically, algebra is used extensively, and sometimes the algebra can get fairly complex. Most of the formulas are the closed-form type (i.e. plug-n-chug).
Generally speaking Electrical Engineers and research MS/PhD engineers use more advanced math on a daily basis. If calculus and diffeq are not your forte, you may want to avoid becoming a EE and/or researcher. If algebra is not your forte, you may want to look into a different profession altogether.
Okay thanks for the advice!
That depends on the situation. There are certainly still physical phenomena for which we have no in-depth understanding. There are many, many concepts that we do understand fairly completely. however, that understanding was reached, generally, using a whole lot of experimenting and math.
Unfortunately, you can’t. No one can. Ultimately, having some qualitative physical insight into a situation can often help a scientist or engineer come up with the proper model to describe it. On the other hand, there are many, many situation where a great deal of insight into a phenomenon can be obtained by examining the governing equations. There will be times where you may, as a scientist or engineer, come across a new application on the job. Sometimes you can just find a governing equation already derived and other times you can derive one (at least approximately) from first principles. Either way, if you are able to look at the equation and recognize certain traits about it, you can get a lot of insight into how the actual physical system behaves. For example, if you see that the governing equation is essentially a diffusion equation, you can expect certain things to be true about it and apply that knowledge accordingly.
In short, ideally there is a back and forth relationship between qualitative physical insight and the insight gained by mathematics. They can reinforce each other quite a bit, and very good engineers understand that. Of course, you can be an engineer and bring home a paycheck every two weeks without being able to do that, but it is certainly beneficial to be able to do that sort of thing.
I can count the number of times on one hand that I have had to do an optimization problem on some kind of physical dimensions outside of the classroom. Experimental science does feature a lot of qualitative analysis, but it features far more quantitative analysis. It’s still very math-heavy on account of the central goal being to help develop a mathematical model that describes a phenomenon. There is a type of research, generally called testing and evaluation, in which designs are tested and evaluated against a set of performance benchmarks and tweaks are made in order to improve it, but those designs weren’t initially created by guesswork. You may find some that were, but by and large, it was done using existing mathematical approximations (models) of the situation in order to come up with the design in the first place, then going back to those in order to tweak the design.
What actually is your job if you don’t mind me asking? And thanks that was very insightful.
I do experimental aerodynamics. Right now I study how air behaves over objects in hypersonic flows.
Sounds cool
Well I like it, at any rate.