Through the semester, besides the examples we covered in class, the homework assignments were the most useful in learning the material. I will not lie; the homework assignments were especially frustrating when they introduced a variable or scenario not covered in class… this is not a negative, forcing my brain to understand how a new variable modified the material covered in class helped me try to understand the material in order to understand how this new variable applied to the theory learned in class.

I understand no material is to be shared outside ODU. I was feeling confident on my first homework, but even that assignment had lessons to be learned. I have learned to not rush through math because even poor handwriting can cause me to confuse a “5” for an “S” or the variable “x” for the multiplication sign.

Not paying close attention to the “K” (meaning times 1,000) before newtons caused my calculation to be way off. Forgetting that a force is only meaningful when we know which way the force is being applied also cost me some miscalculations; and while the class is forgiving here, the engineering industry would not be and life, or investments, would be at huge and unnecessary risks for such mistakes.

Understanding compression and tension as torque is applied to an axis was very challenging. Seems like a very simple concept as we are working through the lessons in the class; however, I had a huge challenge with this concept. I still have a hard time understanding how this force acts on the material, I even grabbed my phone and held it on one hand while I twisted with the other… it seemed to me there was compression being applied to all four corners on the phone as I twisted, or applied torque, to the item.

I now understand, from the example above, that I applied more of shear force, pulling on both side of the material, and as can be seen in the feedback provided by the professor, that as I point my thumb with the torque arrows, the top portion of the image has compression applied to it and the opposite, tension.