Physics

[rahzab]

alrite, its quite early for me talk about university as i am in high school grade 11
I am planning to go either in electrical engineering or software developing and i want to know if physics is really important

because we just started a unit called forces and motions, and i am struggling right now
i hate this unit, however im looking forward to the rest of the units like, optics, and electricity.

i just want to know if motion and forces has helped any of you in your university life...

[rdrake]

Both engineering and science students usually take a general physics course in first year. Motion and forces are covered a lot in this course.

So in short; yes.

[Vermette]

Kinematics is the most fundamental of physics units (after all, every other topic involves motion in SOME capacity); I'd suggest you really cram that material to get it down.

It's also your first good exposure to vector math, which you'll need in uni.

[jbking]

Why do you hate this unit, if I may ask? If it is the formulas and understanding the difference between scalars and vectors then you may have issues with Calculus that uses quite a bit of the same stuff. If there is some other reason state that and maybe someone has another way for you to look at it and make it easier.

JB

[Tony]

If you have trouble with Math along the line of vectors, and Calculus, then Engineering is probably not for you.

[rahzab]

we just had a test and i did all the problems with ease.
I think it was the concept that i wasn't getting...
and some problems are just trickier than the others.

no, i enjoy physics, and I approach all problems with a positive attitude, it's just the concept of relative motion was confusing me a bit.

Ok, so i understand vector math is important, and physics itself is very important, but i dont think i need to get every concept the teacher teaches...

btw, I have some questions

how does an everyday lifestyle go as a programmer or engineer?
how do you guys apply physics in you every day jobs?
is your lifestyle boring?
how much free time do you get?
pressure?
is job boring?
what is the possibility of me getting a job after i get a degree in engineering?

[rahzab]

oh and math isnt a problem for me
or hasn't proven to be a problem yet.

[Clayton]

rahzab @ Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:51 am wrote:

we just had a test and i did all the problems with ease.
how does an everyday lifestyle go as a programmer or engineer?
how do you guys apply physics in you every day jobs?
is your lifestyle boring?
how much free time do you get?
pressure?
is job boring?
what is the possibility of me getting a job after i get a degree in engineering?

Most of these questions are very objective and probably aren't going to tell you what you want. A lot of this is what you make of it, not someone else.

[Tony]

rahzab @ Tue Sep 23, 2008 10:51 am wrote:

btw, I have some questions

Quite off-topic from physics, but I'll bite.

In short -- it really depends on the job.

If you end up writing a physics engine for a video game -- you get to apply a lot of physics, it will not be boring, but there will be a lot of pressure.
If you end up with a cubicle Java job -- you will likely get to apply no physics what so ever, be bored, but there might not be much (if any) pressure to actually get anything done.

Obviously it's a fine gradient with everything in between (and more to either direction). If you don't like a job, I would suggest looking for something that suits you better.

If you are good at what you do, you will likely find a job before graduation.

[jbking]

This is just my experience which likely doesn't match 99% of other people in jobs that fall under the heading of software development but here goes:

My work day tends to consist of solving problems. This may mean writing code to perform some function, determining why such and such isn't working, or how should the process of doing ABC be re-engineered.

In my world of web development, physics can come into play with Javascript and computing offsets for GIS applications, though it can also be applied in other ways like thinking about how much power should a server have and how to measure the capacity of a server's workload. Then there are games and physics which has its own world of wonder.

The part that is boring is that it can become predictable after a while at a company to see the same routine time after time like put in this feature, that feature and another feature that are quite similar and thus not challenging to use. At the same time, if you don't like investigating things and learning things on your own this may not be the type of work for you.

Free time is what you make it as usually most places are pretty open in terms of how things are set up. Granted if I don't do a certain amount of work there may be punishments coming, there may be legitimate reasons why I didn't finish XYZ in time like I discussed this massive bug in our code or Microsoft's code or someone else that may take a while to fix. A large part of software development is either figuring out how to solve something or putting that solution into real world use.

Of course, your mileage may vary and without a time machine you likely can't mimic what my experience has been as I got to ride the dot com boom and bust cycle which was fun.... NOT.

Odds of finding a job in your field depend a lot on how broad you are looking and what are you bringing to the table other than being another body on a job...