doing homework
Ugh--I'm still up, not by choice though, doing my homework that is due tomorrow. I am such a procrastinator! I only figured out what exactly to do earlier tonight--I had been thinking on it all day, trying to figure out where to go in my homework next, then I finally did the smart thing and started reading through my notes from the first half of this class--my class's pre-req that I took a full year and half ago (that was the last time they offered it).
Graduate classes can be such a pain sometimes. Sometimes I love my classes, but sometimes I just want to scream!! It doesn't help that this class is a heavy-math basis class--which is actually saying something because all of my classes are Mechanical Engineering graduate classes, hence are all math based--this one just happens to be super-heavy-math-based.
I just love how ironic it is that math, one of the few pure sciences that is present in all cultures in one aspect or another and can be called the truly universal language or logic, gets more inexact the higher levels of math you learn. When you get to differential equations, you are literally guessing at what the solution can be and no longer is there 'one correct answer' but 'did you find a solution using the prescribed method? If yes, then how? And if not, then why?'
And I'm rambling I know because I am procrastinating going back to work on my one homework problem. A year and a half of not doing problems like these has spoiled me--I'm already up to page 8 and those are the 'neat' pages that I'm turning in. Those don't include all the scrap paper and sheets full of wrong turns. Also, just to make things worse, all this work is being done before I stick everything into matrices that have to be used to actually figure the problem out. This is where I am stuck though--I have an answer to part of the problem and realized the damn thing is in an 8x8 matrix! GAH! I can't remember if I am supposed to get a single numerical value or if it supposed to be in matrix form still!
Why did I think taking Advanced Finite Elemental Analysis was a good idea? Oh yeah, I remember! Because I ran out of my medication, that's why! Grrrrr... At least that I can get fixed since I am going to the doctor's tomorrow to get my medicine refilled. But the other--oh well, I have to head to bed now though so I can actually get up tomorrow.
But now that I thought about it, the homework problem did ask to find the strength matrix, hence the answer should be in matrix form or I really screwed something up.
Graduate classes can be such a pain sometimes. Sometimes I love my classes, but sometimes I just want to scream!! It doesn't help that this class is a heavy-math basis class--which is actually saying something because all of my classes are Mechanical Engineering graduate classes, hence are all math based--this one just happens to be super-heavy-math-based.
I just love how ironic it is that math, one of the few pure sciences that is present in all cultures in one aspect or another and can be called the truly universal language or logic, gets more inexact the higher levels of math you learn. When you get to differential equations, you are literally guessing at what the solution can be and no longer is there 'one correct answer' but 'did you find a solution using the prescribed method? If yes, then how? And if not, then why?'
And I'm rambling I know because I am procrastinating going back to work on my one homework problem. A year and a half of not doing problems like these has spoiled me--I'm already up to page 8 and those are the 'neat' pages that I'm turning in. Those don't include all the scrap paper and sheets full of wrong turns. Also, just to make things worse, all this work is being done before I stick everything into matrices that have to be used to actually figure the problem out. This is where I am stuck though--I have an answer to part of the problem and realized the damn thing is in an 8x8 matrix! GAH! I can't remember if I am supposed to get a single numerical value or if it supposed to be in matrix form still!
Why did I think taking Advanced Finite Elemental Analysis was a good idea? Oh yeah, I remember! Because I ran out of my medication, that's why! Grrrrr... At least that I can get fixed since I am going to the doctor's tomorrow to get my medicine refilled. But the other--oh well, I have to head to bed now though so I can actually get up tomorrow.
But now that I thought about it, the homework problem did ask to find the strength matrix, hence the answer should be in matrix form or I really screwed something up.