Why is dynamics so hard??

I just passed dynamics, this spring, on my first try. If my professor was not very passionate about the topic and helpful, I might have failed.

First, stop worrying about the grade you want. That makes things harder. Just focus on passing, after that, just work harder and don’t think about the grade. Sadly enough, you will just have to study more, or differently. There is no secret method.

Join a study group or do the homework with friends, but make sure you are contributing to the work. I made the mistake of simply following along with the group when I was taking my circuits class. But even that helped, though not as much as I liked.

I also really struggled with dynamics. For me statics and dynamics were the first two courses where the problems changed from 'here's a problem with all the given information apply the rules you know to solve it' to 'holy shit there's so much missing info where do I even start'.

Besides the obvious advice of do lots of problems until you get better , for me it was becoming comfortable with the idea that I didn't know shit when looking at the problem initially. Once I stopped panicking I could then think.

Everyone jokes that statics is just Draw FBD and ΣF=0.

Well same kinda applies to dynamics. Its just a different type of FBD and ΣF=ma. I don't know how the course is taught for you guys but I always tried to write down all the equations and hoped there's enough equations and unknowns to solve simultaneously. The process of setting up all of them is the magic trick and only comes from experience doing many problems. Like being blind folded in a room and grabbing whatever you can to find your way.

Sometimes the course gets harder faster than you can get better at it .If you are struggling or behind it would help to spend additional time on simpler problem sets until you can build up your knowledge toward dealing with the hard ones. This is the real problem, finding the additional time and resolve. Eventually the subject will make sense even if it takes longer.

Dynamics is like the right of passage to more complex subjects like vibrations and controls and fluid mechanics. All the struggle to overcome this hurdle will be rewarded with a new way of thinking, a special ability to unlock new parts of the game.

Goodluck.

the first quiz in my dynamics class had an average of 0.7/12, its hard for almost everyone so just accept it and try your best lol

I hated dynamics so much that I switched my concentration to get as far away from it as possible. I did awful in both dynamics 1 and 2 so no advice here on how to do well. I just barely passed. You’re not alone in despising that class lol

J finished my semester and got an A in dynamics, and it was definitely a tough class. The test questions were rlly difficult to work through and honestly the only thing that helped was showing as much work as possible, and working as many practice problems as u can (I’m sure you’ve heard this a lot). But seriously put down any relevant equations to the problem and j calm down and take one step at a time, if u look to far ahead ur gonna get overwhelmed and stress out too much. Start w writing down ur cord system and ur force equations and see what ur unknowns r then try and use kinematics or ur FBD to solve from there. In short don’t jump the gun and slowly pick away at the unknowns bc in the end it feels like a giant puzzle to solve w equations ur given. And if ur allowed a formula sheet take advantage of this and practice using it days or even a week before exams.

I graduated a year ago with an ME degree. Dynamics was one of the hardest classes I took. I had to take it twice actually. There's other classes that are hard but at that point in my academic career that class was just brutal.

It was one of the only courses I got 100% in.

Im not sure if my uni dynamics was just lame or what, but it was basically grade 11/12 physics + calc 1.

quarter system? In my experience, its all about the instructor. They can make the class seem impossible or very doable. The worst teacher in our department used to teach dynamics and most of the kids failed but when I got there, it was a different teacher and we all got A's and B's

Very professor dependant, if they give you problems similar to ones that you have solved in class/ hw, you can do well, if they make up all new questions intentionally different from anything you have ever seen, it’s tough.

We had 2 profs teaching it and for quizzes they made their own, 1 class was getting 90s, the other 30s (48% of our grade was from quizzes)

The final exam was written by the bad prof, and I shit you not the discord for it (since it was online) had 100 people in it all working together and they could not solve a single question together. Someone even sent the question to chegg and the chegg person got it incorrect. Good thing I studied and didn’t not use the discord during the exam lmao.

It's not you, its the professor. The hardest part of dynamics (and I know I have an MS degree in dynamics) are the parts they don't teach you.

That is the kinematics. Finding out which are the allowed motions is a critical first step to solving dynamics, and most professors almost always skip it.

And kinematics is mostly geometry, trig and calculus.

You did well in statics because it does not require kinematics. Otherwise the equations of motion between the two areas are quite similar. Sum forces/torques either zero or not zero.

The kinematics of a problem will give you the right hand side of the equations of motion.

Seems to depend on your professor. At my college it was a weed out class so often times you’d have people have to retake it

For me, dynamics was one of the only few courses I aced. I think most people find it hard because it's one of the first courses in engineering and the formulas, especially in spherical and cylindrical coordinates are almost impossible to cram. I think it would help to derive the expressions yourself, so you get a nice feel about the theory. And then you can proceed with solving problems. I remember I used to practice around 50 questions every day. Once you get a hang of it, it would all seem like Child's play.

I am in dynamics now and am not sure if I’m going to pass. My grade is right on the edge despite putting in a LOT of time, effort, notes, watching videos, practice problems. Some of the concepts just are not clicking. That being said, I have a single tip. If you don’t know Jeff Hansen’s YouTube channel, I’d definitely give it a go for a number of engineering subjects.

The only D I ever got in my life was in Dynamics. No biggie; I don't want to have a job using Dynamics anyway haha. The vast majority of engineers don't use it!

Do practice problems. Like a lot of them. My prof had us doing 10+ a week. With a lot of problem solving classes which are super common for engineering, I’ve found studying theory to be much less helpful than practicing

This is my same exact problem. Absolutely despite that subject

My advice is to just do a ton of problems and really try to understand them. In that class, I basically didnt go to any lectures, but I did well because I set aside ~6 hours every week to read the textbook to learn how to do every type of problem, then did every homework problem that was given. Its very tempting to just wait until the solutions are given, or until the night before a test, but I think this is the type of class where you cant just learn from the solutions. You gotta struggle as well.

I highly recommend setting up every problem in Matlab so it is easy to recalculate. If you have to manually do it every time you mess up, it makes studying take way longer. In fact, with matlab you can solve dynamics problems with basic trig, even if you have no idea how to do them the traditional way. If you have take home exams, it is a great way to check your answers.

Also, remember chain rule. Its how you switch between a function of distance to one of time and vice versa.

I’m struggling with statics… like this is my second time taking it and I’m pretty much guaranteed an F. My gpa is gonna tank. I really dunno what to do tbh.

In my case (doing a dynamics and control subject, so vibration):

- Each lecture has a crap load of material to cover, and has hours of pre-class material you need to go through before the Monday lecture (which is also only uploaded on the weekend) if you want to have a slight idea of what is going on. This also hurts if you're like me and can find it difficult to get equations down pat quickly.

- The last year and a half of my (6 year full-time) engineering study plan has been a lot lighter on mathematics, and they only started giving out more information on what we needed to know just before the subject was released. So that put me behind to start.

- Have to teach myself MATLAB for the subject and its assignments, in addition to class lessons.

- I was feeling extremely burned out to the point of breakdown and inability to do anything effectively or focus for the first 4 weeks of the semester due to stress and anxiety over my degree.

- The subject is taught in a way that simply doesn't click with how I generally learn, and feels janky. Sample equations, the lecturers and tutors perform, often wind up messy and hard to follow (partially due to messy handwriting). You get lots of calculus being used through equations that usually isn't translated until you get to the end of a problem, if at all, and steps are often skipped. And the textbook we are using only seems to have one chapter covering the subject, and it's plagued with all the issues that are to make it hard to follow.

- I'm also doing capstone this semester, and it is progressing a lot slower than I would like. Additionally, finding a research gap for the project has been hard and time-consuming, because our area is fairly niche, and most of the more viable options are beyond our capabilities, and the time limit. Having to deal with university bureaucracy has also made it harder.