Mechanical or Civil? (1 Viewer)

[ami8000]

Whats up people?

I am thinking about going to ADFA for Mechanical or Civil Engineering.
I was wondering whats the difference and if i should really consider them. Because i am doing
-Maths - 1st
-English (adv) - 7th
-Physics - 2nd
-Chem - 2nd
-Bio - 2nd
-Ancient - idk

My predicted UAI or ATAR is easily above the cut off for UNSW or ADFA. But I really wanna know the difference between Mech. and Civil.

Thanks,
Ami

 

[Uncle]

having done electives here and there for both civil and mechanical for these first few years:

civil deals much more with statics (non moving structures) and stability,
while mechanical is much more diverse and therefore often seen as more difficult and deals with your typical mechanical components like belt and chain drives for power transmission as well as machinery construction, more dynamics than civil (moving objects) and so on.
either way once you do physics in first year, hsc physics wont help you much, its a lot of maths, even beyond 2 unit.

 

[ami8000]

thanks dude

 

[Uncle]

Sorry this is a little bit off topic but I thought it'd be good to ask here instead of creating a new thread.

I've decided to do engineering and I was wondering whether I should bother doing a physics bridging course or read up on hsc physics so that I wouldn't be too disadvantaged.

After reading your comment, should I even bother? I'd imagine they would teach the basics quickly at uni, or am I wrong?

Oh and should I worry about not doing chem either or not?

Thanks.

All that displacement, velocity, acceleration, projectile motion and simple harmonic motion stuff you learned in 2U and MX1 is somehow much more relevant to first year physics.
To the surprise and shock of many, first year physics is mostly mathematical and requires 2U as a bare prerequisite but not HSC Physics.
Let the mathematics lead you.
They will teach you what you need for physics but you need to get a good grip of it very quickly.
A different amount of physics is taught to different engineering majors, you need to decide which major and I can give more insight.

The problem with HSC Physics is it contains a lot of conceptual and historical stuff which is irrelevant, maybe the motion and mathematics might be slightly relevant but there is no calculus in HSC Physics and there is lots of it in first year physics.

If you did HSC Chemistry like I did, then you wouldn't find most of the chemistry elective a problem. Only organic chemistry component (not taught enough in HSC chemistry) is a real bugger to many.

 

[Uncle]

Wow that was very helpful, thank you. The reason why I initially looked at this thread was because I have the same problem. I'm still not sure whether I should go civil or mechanical.

From what I've heard, mechanical seems to be a more interesting course to me because I like the motion/mechanics part in 3U/4U respectively but the projects you are involved in with civil sounds more interesting to me than mechanical unless I managed to get into motor vehicle industry or whatnot. But the likelihood of getting into that seems small, plus, I don't really know what other things mechanical engineers can get into. I haven't had the time to research more into it.

The first year physics required for civil and mechanical majors are only mechanics, thermal physics and waves.
This will be taught to you in one semester.

Electromagnetism and introductory quantum physics aren't needed, only majors in Electrical, Telecommunications, etc require it and are taught it in second semester.
(However a separate (separate from first year physics) course on electricity, logics and circuits is required by the electrical majors and strangely mechanical as well (I'm doing this next semester), but Civil doesn't require this.)

HSC Physics teaches very, very basic concepts on waves, optics, astrophysics, particle physics, mechanics, electromagnetism and quantum physics.
Of course once again many of these topics aren't needed.

So yes you are better off with your knowledge on mathematics and the Ext 2. topic Mechanics would be incredibly helpful and of course this was why I wished I did Ext 2 rather than just Ext 1.

 

[tommykins]

lol @ hsc physics

 

[shady145]

Whats up people?



My predicted UAI or ATAR is easily above the cut off for UNSW or ADFA. But I really wanna know the difference between Mech. and Civil.

prediction isnt solid. what level of maths is that, that u have as ranked first becasue if its 2u then first thought would be why didnt u do 3u or 4u, since it seems u are beating the people in 3u and 4u.

 

[tommykins]

prediction isnt solid. what level of maths is that, that u have as ranked first becasue if its 2u then first thought would be why didnt u do 3u or 4u, since it seems u are beating the people in 3u and 4u.

depends. i mean when i did my hsc i knew i was gnna get 90+.

he might have the same idea.

 

[u-borat]

^fucking pro

 

[tommykins]

^fucking pro

mr 99.05