How much Calculus?

[mplanchard]

I taught Calculus for 10 years and used Calculus as a mechanical engineer in my work - but not all the time. I always used to tell my students that Calculus makes your other math skills stronger. When I was an engineering student, all I wanted to be was a design engineer. But engineering teaches you how to solve problems, not just the ones that are Calculus-based. You can solve customer problems, field engineering, support, marketing and social problems - sometimes Calculus doesn't stand out. It is just a tool to describe a problem.

Marie's tips - know - really know the unit circle with all its common values both in decimal and radical form, 30-60-90 degree, 45-45-90 degree and pythagorean triples - most common 3-4-5 but there are others 5-12-13, 8-15-17, 7-24-25. Most engineering text books has exercises that can be done without a calculator knowing these relationships and the ratio of sine, cosine, and tangent.

Watch - really watch the minus sign. The most common error is caused by this little sign. I once had a professor take off 20 points in a differential equation exam question. I filled two blue books to answer the question - got the correct value - wrong sign. Lesson learned.

Units, units and more units. It is a must - most dont use until the end of the problem but know your units and use them - watch radians and revolutions; they are not the same. Label all answer with units. You should feel as comfortable with inches as you are with SI. Most engineering schools use SI units in the world - we are global. Marie