My professor (with a 2.7 on ratemyprof, I knew I should have tried to avoid him) thinks that assigning homework to be due before he teaches the relevant concepts is a good learning method. He thinks this will make us work harder at learning it on our own.
It is not a good learning method.
The book doesn't explain much -- the sections are really short -- and the example problems are nothing like our homework, which he makes up himself, I guess. The book's section on how to use steam tables was basically, "Steam tables exist. Here's what you do if your value falls in between the numbers on there." But no explanation of how to read them or what they mean or how to use them to solve problems.
Every resource I've been frantically googling online assumes a higher level of knowledge than I have. (Energy balance? With what? For what purpose? What equations do I use? Why does it say to use constant-volume heat capacity when the volume is clearly changing??? What am I doing??????)
I got a 73/100 on the first homework. It was handed back with no commentary on it. Just numbers. "6/15." "8/15." Who knows what I got wrong or what's missing, and why. The solutions online have not been very helpful so far.
He says this is going to help us learn better, and if we really want good grades we’ll just work harder. I have five other classes and don’t have the time or apparently the intelligence to teach myself thermodynamics. I don’t know what to do; I don’t even know the basics yet and am being asked to solve things at what I feel is a much more difficult level than the fourth week of class should require.
So here I am, an hour and a half after I should have gone to bed in order to get up for my orgo lab for which three assignments are due tomorrow, attempting to puzzle out a problem with a cylinder divided in two by a piston. I don’t know what equations to use, I don’t know where to start, we’re not even given any numbers to work with.
I guess I’m asking if anybody has any thermo resources that start from the BASICS and have worked-out EXAMPLES (and preferably are relevant to the two problems I have left to do, but given how long I’ve been searching the internet for help with those, I think I might be out of luck). Or advice on what to do when a teacher thinks his job is to make you bang your head against the table for hours and then briefly go over some background concepts in class after the assignment is due. I can’t imagine passing this class at this rate. Or learning the stuff at the level a chemical engineer ought to know it.
@intparent Not too late to drop yet, though that would throw me off of the recommended academic plan and probably delay graduation. Only one section since the online course only has 12 spots and they wouldn’t let me switch to that when I tried while scheduling.
Forgot to mention that he has canceled class twice and had it taught by an incompetent TA once. The TA didn’t have any notes so he drew them on MS Paint while he talked.
Well, delaying graduation is very expensive. I’d suggest springing for a thermo tutor – it is a LOT cheaper than paying for an extra semester. Thermo is tough under the best of circumstances, and this does not sound ideal. ;(
Google “Thermodynamics Video Lecture.” Quite a few come up including MIT, Kahn and Yale. I just didn’t know which one was the best match. Then make sure you have HTML 5 playback and you can watch at 1.5x or even 2.0x if you can understand the. Use the highest speed where the lecture is still very intelligible. Most of those courses also have good lecture notes. You can’t dodge every bad professor. Unfortunately you drew one in a pretty difficult course. Good luck.
The best thermo course on youtube is from UC Irvine. The only other complete thermo course is the one from mit and that one is actually a physical chemistry course not an engineering one. But the ones from Irvine are actually very good.
Internet courses are so good that they can almost replace your actual professor. You still have to attend classes to make sure you emphasize his items of interest and know what will be on the tests.
However, you can certainly be a week ahead of him and ready to get those homework sets done. I will warn you that thermo is just a really, really hard and time-consuming class, 30 years later I still recall working 30-40 hour weeks to get our problem sets done, and I don’t think it had much to do with “understanding” or teaching.
You may just have to really bump up the hours you are spending on this class (and yes, I remember having no social life junior year) …
Also - junior year is a bit late - but you need to learn the material regardless of the professor’s skill, demeanor, or grading system … and do whatever it takes to get a B or go for the A …
A good professor is a gift, a bad professor is almost to be expected …
And professors aren’t bad if they teach classes that are really, really hard and make the class work hard …
Same thing happened to me 40 years ago. Got a 50 on midterm. Terror struck me for the first time cuz I was paying my way through school . Read every book I could find. Found a good one. Got a 90 on final. Good lesson! And in life too! Spend the dough on Internet courses.