The classes I took this Spring semester were:
Materials Processing-- The manufacture and modification of the most important engineering materials: metals, plastics, ceramics, and composite materials. Topics covered included casting, forging and other shaping processes, welding (there's a whole lot to it; you'd be surprised) and other joining processes, machining, and a bunch of other stuff. It was a pretty tough class. I pulled several grueling all-nighters for it. I thought I was going to end up with a C but I got a A- somehow. It was the first A- I was extremely happy to receive. I will spare you pictures of my quizzes and assignments-- I trust you will take my word when I say it was hard.
The most interesting thing I learned in that class is that the idea that glass is NOT a "slow moving liquid" that deforms over decades. People made the induction from old houses having deformed windows and spread the commonly-held misconception that it had done so over many years. In fact, older glassmaking techniques had no way of ensuring consistency and flatness of produced glass; if a thicker end resulted, they would just use common sense and install that end at the bottom so it was less prone to breaking.
Materials Processing Lab-- Deformation of metals and plastics, like shearing, bending, upsetting (in layman's terms, "squishing") and wire-drawing. We would look at the microstructure of the deformed metal most of the time. There was a lot more to it than what I just described, but that's probably all you want to know.
This is what martensite looks like on a microscopic scale. Martensite is formed by quenching mid-to-high carbon steel from a high temperature. It is very strong (in terms of elasticity) but very brittle. For this reason, not all steels are "weldable" because high-carbon steels can form martensite at the weld as it cools and make the weld prone to failure, which is a very bad thing.
Mechatronics-- This class was a mess. It was a crash course in Electrical Engineering. We had 2 quizzes per week (one for reading comprehension, one for homework comprehension) and the tests were hit-or-miss. I made a (on an objective grading scale) failing grade on one, and a 95 on another. The final was a very anticlimactic one-- it was just another test. Off the top of my head, major topics covered were basic DC circuits, power engineering, signal analysis, transistors, op-amps, AC circuits, magnetism and magnetic circuits, and motors (there are about a dozen or so different types of electric motors, and they're all complicated to even understand how they work).
This is an animation of how a 5-5-5 timer operates. It's a cheap, "simple" chip that has an only function of toggling on and off by itself. I still could never make sense of how it actually works.
Mechatronics Lab-- The most ridiculous lab I've ever taken (and probably will take) in my college career. The way it was administrated was very... unique. I've had labs in the past with very time-consuming and painful-to-write lab reports, but there were no reports in this lab. Instead, most of the work went into prelab assignments, which, in every other lab class, are not so bad. But these regularly took many hours to complete, even with the help of a friend.The lab section itself was more of an intelligence test than anything. So many things could go wrong with building your circuit, and for me and many others, they almost always did. Murphy's Law was blatantly obvious in that lab. Circuits are confusing, and there is no way to prepare for it. There was no way to practice; you just had to think quick on your feet. I made a previous post about this class.
Engineering Statistics-- At first, this class was pretty neat. It was my first introduction to probability theory and it was interesting stuff. However, as the class progressed, the material progressively became more difficult, abstract, and boring. Thankfully, I had a great TA, and his discussion sections were much better than the seasoned professor's lectures. The tests were ridiculous-- they were split up into two separate tests. One was quantitative problem solving during the discussion section, and the other was pure theory, in the form of essays, during class time. There were EIGHT essays per test. Luckily, I was exempt from the final (receiving the good news was probably the happiest moment of my semester), which turned out to have SIXTEEN essay questions to be answered over the course of 3 hours. I was saved from that painful experience, and not to mention the task of studying for it.
Confidence intervals and null hypothesis error.
Machine Elements-- This course was pretty eye-opening as far as structural design is concerned. We covered failure and fatigue of metal of structural components of machines, and we looked at many important elements like shafts, bearings, gears, springs, and bolts. Each and every one of them are much more complicated than you'd think, and it really made me appreciate how much consideration goes into what seems like the simplest of things.
Planetary gears are pretty crazy. And hard to analyze.
I also took a machining certification class near the end of the semester. I learned how to run a bandsaw, mill, and lathe.
This summer, I worked ~20 hours a week doing "research" here at UT, but it's more of a design project than anything else. It's called research because it's such a creative, open-ended process. I, another student, and my Machine Elements professor are designing a da Vinci-inspired walking lion which must also be able to turn and sit, that is almost purely mechanical (no robotics) for a guy called Shaun Whitehead and a French company called Dassault Systemes, to showcase their Catia software. It will probably end up in a French museum when they build the actual product from our design. However, the design is not such a straightfoward process. It's challenging to say the least, but I like the job even though it's not easy. I'd much rather do a mentally demanding job than a physically mandating job, or a repetitive job of either kind.
Here's what we have to show so far:
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