>> Kinematics and Dynamics in 2D
>
> Kinematics is a word?

Yes, it's basically about movements of objects without considering the 
forces that cause the movements.  eg if one part is fixed to move at 5000rpm 
what happens to the rest of the connected system.  Quite a lot of geometry 
and resolving velocities, instantaneous centres of rotation etc.

> Any idea what a "resonant mode" is?

One particular way something can vibrate, that can't be split up further.  A 
bit like splitting a signal into sine waves.  eg take a 30cm ruler, you can 
bend it in the middle, that's the 1st mode.  The 2nd mode is to force it 
into a complete sine wave shape (ie two bends in the length).  Of course in 
3D you get many more modes, like twisting, bending in the other direction 
etc.  It's easier to analyse the system if you can split it down into the 
resonant modes.  Each resonant mode will also have a natural frequency.

> Ouch. AFAIK, anything involving fluids or gasses = highly complex.

Yep this was my worst course, working out the states of steam and water 
vapour as it goes through a cycle, using huge look-up-tables because there 
are no formulae for these highly complex things, etc.  Although learning 
exactly how a jet engine works and calculating the exit speed and 
temperature of the exhaust gases was pretty cool.

>> Materials I & II
>
> Now that *sounds* quite simple... but I bet it isn't.
>
> (I'm presuming this is about elastic vs plastic deformation and so forth.)

Yeh, and how stress and cracks propagate, phase diagrams of mixtures of 
materials, particularly on the iron-carbon one (there are like 100 different 
states of iron depending how quickly it is cooled and what proportion of 
carbon you have in there).  Also hardness of materials, statistical analysis 
of ceramics, that sort of thing.

> ...so, Lorenz forces and so on?

Yep, starting with how semiconductors work (very physicsy) then going on to 
diodes and transistors, the 2nd part of the course did the same for 
magnetics, really a base lecture course for other ones.

>> Electrical Power
>
> OK, I have *got* to be missing something here. ;-)

Well from the previous course we already learnt that resistance is complex, 
so that helps you understand the generators and motors here, then 3-phase 
power, power transmission, transformers, power factor correction, that sort 
of stuff.

>> Comms Fourier Transforms & Signal & Data Analysis
>
> What a title! o_O

Got very hairy at stages with things like cross-correlation and 
auto-correlation, also with things like z-transforms and FIR and IIR filters 
etc.

>> Mathematics
>
> Oh... so that's specific then!

There were 2 courses here, both were optional depending on how much maths 
you had done at A level.  Most people sat the "fast" course just as a 
refresher, just to relearn the basics like how to solve differential 
equations, how matrices work, stuff like that.

>> Computing
> Interesting?

Not really, software life cycle, structured programming, numerical precision 
errors, algorithm complexity, search&sort algorithms, very vague and 
general, clearly aimed at writing some small code block to solve an 
Engineering problem rather than any huge software project.

>> Structural Design Project (ie building a bridge!)
> LOL!

They applied prices to each bit of metal you could use, then you had a 
budget to build a bridge to span a certain gap (about 1 metre) and support a 
certain weight (about 150kg).  Of course the cheapest one that could 
withstand 150kg won.  Mine buckled and collapsed spectacularly at about 70kg 
due to me not actually putting it together very squarely.  I still have this 
twisted lump of rusting metal in the attic at home!

> The... uh... no, I can't remember the name of it. But there *is* a 
> programming contest that's a bit like the IRTC. They set a challenge, and 
> you have so many days to write a program that solves it. One of them was 
> where your program accepts a track description as input, and produces a 
> series of driving commands as output. The car that gets round the track 
> fastest wins. (But the car simulation part is an external program, with 
> limits on acceleration, cornering, etc.)

Oh that sounds cool, one of our practicals was a bit like that, we had to 
write a program to control some factory that was producing several different 
parts according to demand.  It got quite complex and remember writing a 6 or 
8 dimensional optimisation algorithm to see when was best to switch 
production lines from one product to another!

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