Ideas for Engineering Course

[mplanchard]

Michael, See if your local community college has Calculus 2/3. Calculus 3 is sometimes called Vector Calculus or Multivariable Calculus. If you receive AP Physics credit, try an Engineering Statics class at a community college. You will be able to transfer the credit back to your high school if needed for graduation credit and use it for the college you will enter next year. However, always check with the college you plan to attend if they will accept transfer credit or AP credit. Your local community college or local technical/vocational school may run machine shop classes in their night time programs.

Another way is to take an AP English class, yes English, because if the college you are attending will accept AP English, then you can concentrate on you engineering courses freshman year. Sometimes an engineering college will accept AP humanities credit over AP science/math credit.
If you want to obtain a BS in an Engineering discipline, there are math courses you will have to take beyond Calculus. So the more math you can take the better - Statistics and Linear Algebra come to mind. Most engineers have to take computer science classes so be prepared.

Does your school offer an electronics class? Even mechanical engineers have to take an electrical engineering class. Electical engineering is quite calculus based, but labs are very practical and an electronics class would help. Also, some colleges offer online classes through their continuing education programs.

SolidWorks Robot Summer School is also a good option, especially you can investigate the analysis tools. Although this summer we will concentrate on 3D design and simple analysis with forces and displacement. I would run through the exercises on heat transfer, static and dynamic analysis, and design scenerios. This would show you how to simulate the physics behind the 3D model and to define the boundary conditions to a problem.
Marie