Dual-Major: Mech Systems/Applied Maths

[jadams]

eeeexcellent. Thank you for clearing that up. I just keep hearing so much negative feedback about ESD 1, but it's recommended by every engineering specialisation even though it isn't a necessary pre-requisite, (besides chem eng.) How did you find it?

[Hancock]

I found it pretty easy to be honest. Quite a few lectures slept through haha. Anyway, you start off with ethics of engineering and safety protocols for about 3 weeks, which also involves flowcharts. It's legitimately boring. I believe that in order to IEAust/Engineer Australia accreditation, the course plan must include some ethics somewhere so they do it with ESD1. The next part was Chemical Engineering fundamentals, which looked at fluid flow through different types of pipes and tank shapes. I found this part quite interesting and probably pushed the subject from a 2/10 to a 6/10 for me.

The last part was programming with Lego Robots, which, in hindsight, was quite fun albeit a little easy. MATLAB was used throughout the subject, however, not to the level of ESD2.

You could easily get away with not doing, however, I did enjoy it for the most part. You could probably skip the first 3 weeks of lectures (don't do it, I'm just saying) and still get a good mark for the subject.

[jadams]

Did it give you any insight into what engineering is actually like? ie. is it a suitable, accurate introduction to engineering?

[Hancock]

Only the Chem Eng bits. However, the safety precautions and case studies stuff was a little interesting to me. All in all, it's not meant to be a full-technical subject, so I can understand why many people didn't do it. Basically, it's RMIT's Engineering 'Engineering, Society and Sustainability' and Monash's 'Engineering profession' with some programming and Chemical engineering making up 2/3 of the course.