I'm interested in taking statics and dynamics to fulfill one of my CpE "science electives". Does anyone here have enough insight on the IDE program to compare and contrast taking IDE 50 followed by 150 with just taking IDE 110? Anyone able to compare IDE 150 with ME/AE 160?

The catch is I have an interest in controlling physical systems, and am willing to do a little extra work here if it puts me further down that path.

Well, for one, IDE 110 (Mechemat) lists IDE 50 as a prerequisite. Which is important because one requires an understanding of the other.

IDE 50 deals with rigid-body static loading in 2 and 3 dimensions. If you don't want your physical objects to move, that's fine--you learn to understand and evaluate different support methods. But things don't bend or break in Statics.

IDE 110 takes Statics a step further and adds stress, strain, and deformation. Things bend and break, and you learn how to account for that in design. You evaluate materials in your design based on rigidity vs. mass and other such criteria. You learn about the effects of temperature on nominal length of an object, and where and how to place a hole so your strength is disrupted the least.

IDE 150 is the study of rigid dynamic systems in 2 dimensions. You don't consider the effects of deformation (and you won't in the ME 160 class either). So nothing bends and nothing breaks. You learn to describe the motion of 2 connected objects, and you can describe the motion of one object in terms of the other and in terms of a fixed reference. Not only motion, but also force, momentum, energy, and all those other Phys23 words. There's more to it, but that's the basic idea.

ME 160 covers the same topics as IDE 150, goes more in-depth on some topics, and in addition, covers 3-dimensional analysis.

Heh; guess it gets really nasty when things are moving and deforming at the same time.


Dur, I meant IDE 140 - Statics And Dynamics, not IDE 110 - Mechanics of Materials. What gives when they squeeze IDE 50 and IDE 150 into a single semester? Is IDE 140 a "non-believers" course, or is it genuinely worth its salt?

Also, out of sheer curiosity, how does IDE 110 compare to MET 121? They sound similar.

They have a class on that--I think it's called Continuum Mechanics, it's a 300-level EMe course. I don't know anyone (at least any undergrad) who's taken it willingly. That's the kind of thing best left to post-docs, in my opinion.


Never taken it, can't help you here. Though after having seen some people go through it, it seems like it's enough thrown at you all at once to just royally confuse someone.


In Met 121 we learned properties of materials--steel's stronger, aluminum's more elastic, magnesium or polyethylene trumps both for strength per unit mass...etc. IDE 110 is different in that it's not particularly material-specific. In mechemat, it's the shape and the loading that matters--not the material. At least that's where it starts. After that, you learn how stress relates to strain and deformation in a given material. Later on in the course, you could be asked if a bridge of material X would fail given a set of loading conditions, or if material Y would be better suited for the job. All in all, it's more about shapes and less about materials. That make a little more sense?

Yeah; thanks!

IDE 140 is basically a "non-believers" class. Out of all 3 IDE classes most people take...50, 150, and 110, I by far got the most out of 110. Of course I'm not a CpE (GE here), but I found it to be extremely useful. Unless you are dealing with the mechanical and structural design of the physical systems you are controling, I'd just reccomend taking IDE 140. IDE 150 would *probably* be the most useful to you, but you would have to take IDE 50 as a pre-req, so you would have 5 hours of classes instead of 3.

I'm an EE and I took 140 (at the time it was BE140). I thought it was really easy. It was basically a Physics 23 review. Everything is 2-dimensional. In the first part of the class, you do statics, and there are a lot of truss problems. All I remember are frames and joints. After that you do dynamics, and all I can remember are things like relative velocity and relative acceleration. All you really do is draw some diagrams, look at numbers and find what equations to use and the rest is plug and chug. I think the point of the class is to teach problem solving methodology, because you do have to figure out a path to go and often use multiple steps and multiple formulas. The material itself is rather trivial. I thought the class was boring but like I said, it was pretty easy (if you do the homework). That's my 2 cents.