<p>So I'm pretty sure I'm going into Aerospace engineering next year, and I was just wondering... over the course of an Engineering degree, how much memorization is involved?</p>
<p>I've accepted the fact that I'll have to do some memorization as part of the college experience, etc.. but, for my Major classes, I don't know how much of that I can take.</p>
<p>If you do it right, you should have almost not memorization to do. If you do it right, you will have to memorize a few very basic equations and everything else can be derived from there or looked up in a book or other reference.</p>
<p>MEMORIZATION = BAD!</p>
<p>people who memorize are useless. great, so you can regurgitate an equation and not know how it is derived, its assumptions, or its mechanisms. blah! you may get a high score on a test but in terms of becoming a good scientist/engineer, you would fail!</p>
<p>so, in short, do whatever you can to not memorize… even if it means getting lower marks.</p>
<p>Memorization is very important in engineering:</p>
<ul>
<li>You must memorize the alphabet</li>
<li>You must memorize the numbers</li>
<li>You should memorize times tables so you don’t have to type 2 times 5 into the calculator to get 10.</li>
</ul>
<p>Actually, on a more serious note, the other posters are correct. Engineering is about using information from textbooks rather than memorizing. However, remembering large amounts of information quickly will greatly help you out, as you will take exams faster that way.</p>
<p>memorization kind of does exist in engineering, only not really</p>
<p>Studying engineering involves two fundamental processes</p>
<ol>
<li>Understanding the material conceptually and building problem solving skills</li>
<li>Re-doing problems over and over…and over</li>
</ol>
<p>The 2nd part is kind of like memorizing, what I mean to point out is that there is a hmmm how do I say, extent of redundancy that needs to be included in your studies</p>
<p>"MEMORIZATION = BAD!</p>
<p>people who memorize are useless. great, so you can regurgitate an equation and not know how it is derived, its assumptions, or its mechanisms. blah! you may get a high score on a test but in terms of becoming a good scientist/engineer, you would fail!</p>
<p>so, in short, do whatever you can to not memorize… even if it means getting lower marks."</p>
<p>Tell that to the kids in pre-med.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Did you miss the part where we are in the engineering forum and were talking about memorization in engineering?</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss
</p>
<p>Unless you think Biology and Chemistry are not science?</p>
<p>Lazy prof’s will give memorization-based tests because they’re easy to make. That isn’t too common, though.</p>
<p>The OP didn’t mention scientists, and MD’s are not scientists.</p>
<p>Really, there’s a lot of memorization in any field…</p>
<p>Don’t believe me? Take a look at the following sentences and see if you can’t complete them from memory.</p>
<p>log(ab) = log(a) + …</p>
<p>For every action there is a … and … reaction.</p>
<p>(f o g)'(x) = (f ’ o g)(x) * …</p>
<p>F = m * …</p>
<p>etc.</p>
<p>Call it what you want but there are tons of mathematical facts and physical laws that you really need to memorize to be useful at anything, engineering and science included. Good luck deriving those things on every test you take in college.</p>
<p>If you want to talk about having references, that’s all well and good, but somebody who hasn’t memorized 99% of the things that he’s going to be using on a regular basis is going to have a tough time doing anything.</p>
<p>I guess the good news is that engineering isn’t special, all disciplines require lots of memorization. The bad news? All disciplines require a lot of memorization. You don’t like memorization, I hear there that there’s money in breaking rocks to make gravel… and the memorization there isn’t too bad.</p>
<p>
What do you mean? I have “memorized” how pressure/flow systems work. Memorization merely refers to calling information on command without needed to look something up. </p>
<p>That’d be sad and you would be a poor engineer if you had to look at a book everytime you looked at a system in order to figure out how basic scientific relationships are supposed to work.</p>
<p>I think they’re talking about rote memorization. There’s a difference between regurgitation of fact and actual knowledge. Engineering is less about regurgitation of fact and more about understanding systems.</p>
<p>You have to learn stuff in engineering, but it isn’t like memorizing dates and names for history class… Does that help you out, OP?</p>
<p>I think what these guys like rocketDA mean is like memorizing how to do things the exact same way. There’s a word I learned in psychology the other day… I think it’s called fixation, or something. Your approach as an engineer shouldn’t be ‘fixated’ from one perspective… you should be able to figure out how systems work on the knowledge of more basic things like the laws of physics to help you, not just because you memorized it, but because you can just figure it out.</p>
<p>I think that’s what they meant anyway.</p>
<p>“F = m * …”</p>
<p>This is so funny because this is actually taught wrong in high school.</p>
<p>It IS NOT F=ma. It is F= dP/dt = d(mv)/dt. If mass is constant in the control volume then it is F=ma. Otherwise, rockets wouldn’t work!</p>
<p>F = m a + m_dot v</p>
<p>I imagine that’s because a number of people start to learn physics before they learn partial derivatives. ;)</p>
<p>(For the record I was actually taught a = F/m since typically you apply a force and measure a resultant acceleration. Very rarely do you apply an acceleration and measure the force required.)</p>
<p>^ True but besides the point. F = dp/dt is just another thing to memorize. Knowing when to use which one over the other… true, that can take some skill, but there’s memorization involved there too. Like I know that if dm/dt is zero, I can simply use F = ma (most elementary problems assume mass is constant…) The point is that there is lots of memorization at both upper AND lower levels. Basically, if you can do a line integral in under an hour, you have memorized a lot of facts about things.</p>
<p>I think the difference between “memorization of facts” and “knowledge” is being overplayed here. Let’s be plain about it: you just think some facts are more important to know than others, perhaps because you consider them to be more useful.</p>
<p>Rocket please, they don’t teach it incorrectly in HS, they just don’t give the whole story. HS physics is almost always without calculus (I find it almost laughable now to look at it with out calc, but they teach it anyway). They put the appropriate qualifications with the formulas so that we don’t need to worry about pesky derivatives. That does not make it wrong, just dumbed down.</p>
<p>And please, I don’t need some smart ass swooping in here to tell me that relativity makes the whole thing wrong. We know, this is the engineering forum.</p>
<p>
I guess I don’t understand knowing facts is required in order to understand systems. I’ve never known an engineer that was really good at memorizing things that didn’t at least know how the basics on how systems operated.</p>
<p>And furthermore, it’s not as if memorizing actually hurt them - knowing facts and figures of commonly used knowledge in your job will not detract from performance.</p>
<p>dp/dt is not a partial derivative though, RacinReaver. It is a normal derivative… 
Still I think you are on the right track there.</p>
<p>Also, in my experience there are a lot of times where you are trying to find F and not a… It happens a lot in fluids, which is my area of concentration. Of course there a lot of times you are trying to find something like velocity too, but solving for pressure and force is just as common.</p>