<p>Hey everybody I was wondering if Physics I/II important in CS, especially if I plan on pursuing an MS later on? Reason why I ask because I am a PB transfer student that will start in Spring 2012. My previous BS covered Physics and received PHYS I-"C", PHYS II"-"B"
thats transferable. I took the classes back in 2009. Will this affect anything when I appy for an MS later on? Is Physics important if I plan on doing research in robotics? If so should I do online tutorials or purchase a book to study, instead of retaking the class for a better grade? Thanks.</p>
<p>A deep (even at the HS level) understanding of physics is not important in the study of CS, no. Even if you do robotics, odds are that MEs and EEs are going to write the low-level embedded code that actually controls the physical mechanisms… or that the mechanisms will be purchased with existing drivers. In any event, you will not need to mess with that unless you want to.</p>
<p>You only need to understand enough physics to develop the control logic. So if you’re writing a system that will do search and destroy or something, you might need to know enough about physics to estimate the time to a waypoint based on distance and average speed, or to know how much to lead a target with known position and velocity, or stuff like that. The good news is that, for that kind of stuff, odds are that a domain scientist or engineer is going to write the code or hand you a model, and all you have to do is to implement it. As a CS guy, what you’re going to be doing from scratch is finding efficient implementations of known models, using known hardware interfaces in robust ways, writing good code and documenting it, and innovating in the control logic part… sorting, searching, scheduling, remembering, predicting, etc.</p>
<p>More to the point, I don’t think you need to sweat some bad grades in physics… other than recognizing that this might be a foreshadowing of things to come in CS, if you don’t start working harder at the studying.</p>
<p>Distance, speed, velocity all makes sense. I do remember those things and applying them to the labs I took. Thanks for the last remarks. My previous BS was in BMET and pretty much made A’s and B’s. Didn’t lose focus when I made a C in Physics, even though it was a bummer. My overall GPA was a 2.9. I know CS is a complete 180 turn around from ET, but I enjoy math and science and trying to apply it to electronics, i.e. robotics. Any challenges I might be facing with CS compared to my background in electronics? My 3rd/4th year I took digital circuits, signal processing, microprocessor architecture etc.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention…because of my background in electronics and interest in theory, designing code, and implementation/application I submitted a petition of change major for CompE last week. My interest falls under embedded systems/microprocessors in the field of robotics and I think I can fulfill that with either degree. When I look at job postings for embedded systems, not necessarily robotics, degree requirements are either CS or CompE. Looking at both programs at U of H, the first couple of semesters are similar. Does anybody have any experience in the field of embedded systems? If so what program they studied? If I do decided to go with CompE is Physics important in engineering (similar to OP)?</p>