ENGR20004: Engineering Mechanics

30% on 3-4 assignments, 15% on MST, 5% on weekly quizzes, 50% on final exam

Note that I took this subject during 2020 where everything's online so it may be a slightly different experience to what others might experience.

There's a lot to go over in this subject but like what you might've heard or seen, this is not an easy subject. It's difficult, no doubt. Maybe the most difficult in my undergrad so far. Yes the likelihood of someone failing isn't impossible. Yes people have dropped out or redone the subject. But don't let that scare you too much. It is possible to get through this subject, it is possible to do well and maybe even enjoy this subject.

CLASSES AND ASSESSMENTS
Lectures
The lectures are taught by Christian for Statics/Solids and Bagus for Dynamics, and are in a format where the first 2 essentially teach the week's content and the third lecture is reserved for examples about what the first 2 lectures teach. In online teaching, the first 2 are recorded and sent at the beginning of the week, and the 3rd is a webinar with the lecturer to ask questions. While you might think that this means there is not as much to learn, trust me when I say that this is a lot, and I mean a LOT of new concepts and content. Something I would recommend is just making sure you redo the questions from the lecture by yourself. It's easy to just go and say "yeah I get this" but until you actually do it, you won't fully understand it.

As for the lecturers I found both Christian and Bagus to be quite friendly and engaging (well at least as well as it could be in online only). I did find Christian's methods and explanations a bit confusing at times. Bagus I felt was better and more clear in his explanations and working out. He also felt really relatable as he would talk about his past experiences as a student and just occasional stories about him, which helped keep the engagement and just made the subject better in general. There were some people that found Bagus a bit confusing, but I would attribute that more to just the dynamics topic itself.

Just a note that the subject content and difficulty can vary between lecturers so you may get a different experience.

Workshops
The workshop structure contains a mixture of prac weeks and non prac weeks. In non-prac weeks, the workshops run similar to that of a 2 hour tutorial, going through assigned questions with your group (explained in a bit) for 2 hours and working together either on the whiteboard, or in the case of online, in breakout rooms. In prac weeks, the 2nd hour is spent instead on the actual prac, which is kind of similar to ESD2 in the way it runs. However, in online classes there is just generally no prac week, instead a video of the experiment which is more of a simulation is sent to be analysed as part of the assignment.

And here is where I emphasise the importance of finding a good group. This is the group you'll be working with for the entire sem, including every week in the workshops and also in all the assignments. I was lucky enough to get really good group that I could work with, and because of that I enjoyed doing the assessments even if some of it was long and tedious. The workshops and breakout rooms were also more enjoyable because of this. However, I can see both the assignments and workshops turning into more of a chore or obstacle simply by having a bad group.

Assessments
The assessments consist of 3-4 assignments worth a total of 30%, a mid-sem test worth 15%, weekly quizzes worth 5% and a final exam worth 50%.

The assignments are what you would expect in engineering and mainly consist of analysing the theoretical parts of a concept and then comparing that with the experimental results. They are a mixture of maths and deriving, problem solving using learnt content and analysis of the experiment with MATLAB. It should be noted that MATLAB is a key component, and can be 30-50% of the assignment, so make sure someone in your group is comfortable with using MATLAB. You have approximately 2 to 3 weeks to do each assignment. It's a decent amount of work so don't leave it till the last day with your group. If you're online, I would highly recommend going into group zoom calls with your group throughout the assignment instead of just texting each other, it just helps a lot with communication.

The mid-sem was quite difficult with little time to work through questions. The topics based off the statics/solids section and made by Christian (who does favour making more difficult questions). For online, it was split into 3 separate mid sems worth 5% each. As I'll discuss later however, it can vary quite a bit between lecturers so you might have a different questions.

The weekly quizzes are well just that, 5 questions each week totalling 0.5% to basically "keep you engaged" in the subject. Some of these are more difficult than others but these questions are just off a textbook.

The final exam was more lenient in time than the mid sem but with a higher difficulty. I'll speak more about it in THE DIFFICULTY section.


CONTENT: STATICS/SOLIDS AND DYNAMICS
The subject is split into 2 sections, Statics/Solids and Dynamics. Statics/Solids are a follow up from ESD2 with an expansion of a lot of new content. The structure is as follows
- Week 1: Revision of ESD2 stuff (FBD, Method of Joints)
- Week 2: Method of Sections and Frames/Machines
- Week 3: SFD (Shear Force Diagrams) and BMD (Bending Moment Diagrams)
- Week 4/5: Stress, Strain and Poisson's Ratio
- Week 6: Centroids and Area Moment of Inertia, Flexure/Beam Bending

In terms of learning and understanding the content, the statics and solids parts are mainly alright (Weeks 1-5). They are a slight increase in difficulty from the mechanics section of ESD2, but it's not large and much of it just comes from the fact that there is a lot of new content involved. Week 6 however, does dial up the difficulty quite a bit with a lot of new concepts being introduced. This is where some integration or deriving may be applied, and can be a struggle at first to understand and apply. However, it is still doable with time and there are resources both provided by the subject (short video explanations) and also you can easily find some explanations online as well. This part is mostly okay, but as I'll explain later can actually be quite difficult depending on the questions (in THE DIFFICULTY).

Dynamics is where the scary reputation of engineering mechanics comes from. Like statics/solids, dynamics introduces quite a lot of new concepts. However, these are definitely harder to wrap your head around and can be quite confusing at times. The applying of these concepts is main difficulty for this section. The structure for dynamics is
- Week 7: Particle Kinematics and Coordinate Systems
- Week 8: Particle Kinetics and Work/Energy
- Week 9: Linear and Angular Impulse and Momentum
- Week 10: Free Vibration and Rigid Body Motion: Relative Velocity
- Week 11: Rigid Body Motion: Relative Acceleration, Instantaneous Centres, Equation of Motion
- Week 12: Revision

Weeks 7-9 are generally ok with a bit of time to understand everything. Application and general problem solving are the hard part, and unfortunately simply doing more questions does not have that same effectiveness as something say in prereq math subjects (Calc 2, Linear Algebra, Eng Math), although doing questions of course does still help. However, the topics in week 10 and 11 are where you'll find the most confusion. A lot of this will not have been anything you've seen before, and the content can be hard to understand at times. But once again, the real difficulty lies in the application and problem solving aspect.

THE DIFFICULTY
And if you haven't noticed already, why engineering mechanics is so difficult is due to the application of these new equations and concepts that you learn, for statics and solids and especially for dynamics, NOT just the new concepts. Because of the high amount of new concepts, there are too many different types of questions that can be made and so many different ways to apply these concepts. Therefore at times, it can feel like there is a lack of a methodology or consistency when working through a problem. What I basically mean is that it won't be like say in ESD2 where if it asks to solve a truss system you automatically know the steps, method of joints -> find reaction forces -> FBD at each joint and use Fx, Fy, M = 0, at least not for much of it. That's not to say that there is no pattern or method to approach a question, for a lot of it there is, even for the harder topics like rigid body motion. But as I'll explain below, the questions can be adjusted to vastly change the approach and the difficulty.

The thing is with eng mech, is that it has an extremely high skill ceiling. The questions can be made to be however difficult a lecturer wants it to be, and there is no better example of this than on the exam. Before the exam, the lecturers, Christian and Bagus, said that they did not use the past exams as a reference, and it showed. Bagus said that the exam questions were going to be doable as long as you studied, and similar to that of the examples and questions they gave in lectures. And for the dynamics questions with Bagus this was true, most of Bagus' part was doable and similar to the style of the lecture questions, with enough difficulty to be able to separate the cohort of students. However, Christian's questions were not consistent with this, and so what ended up on the exam was that pretty much ALL of the statics and solids parts were actually harder than the dynamics portion. In fact, the hardest question of 5 on the exam was based off weeks 1-3, the easiest topics in eng mech. What I'm trying to say is that how difficult the subject is can vary greatly with the lecturer so it's hard to know what to expect even by doing past exams, as each lecturer has a different approach and difficulty and chooses slightly different topics.

TIPS
Aside from making sure you get a good group, redoing the lecture questions and not falling behind (you will die if you fall behind), I don't really have other suggestions I can give. From my experience, other stuff like the quizzes can also help with studies and so can the tutorial worksheets (both the workshop ones and separate tute ones). I found part A of the tute worksheets to be good in difficulty and manageable whereas part B I struggled with at times particularly for some of the topics. A lot of part B was harder than the exam but remember the difficulty would vary with the lecturer. Overall, just study however you can and try to find a method that suits you.

FINAL WORDS
I guess to describe the role of the subject, it's best thought of as a stepping stone or a filter for future engineers. The problem solving and all those difficulties are what you would expect to have continuing forward, and for many this will be a good idea of whether or not you want to continue into engineering. I found the subject overall to be interesting at times, a good motivator and enjoyable. Other times I found it confusing, a demotivator and a source of stress. But ay, here I am, finishing this subject with no regrets and continuing in my journey to becoming an engineer. Like I said at the start, is this easy? No, definitely not. But is this doable? Yes it is. And can you find enjoyment in this subject? Through all of the confusion and difficulties, yes you actually can. This is one hell of a subject and I wish you good luck in getting to the other side!

Yes, with lecture capture

Christian Brandl for Statics/Solids, Bagus Nugroho for Dynamics

A couple available on the exam archive but none given. Note that different lectures = different style of questions.

3.5/5 online. 4/5 if in person.

None prescribed, Meriam JL and Kraige LG, Engineering Mechanics : Dynamics 7th Edition and HGibbeler RC, Statistics and Mechanics of Materials 3rd Edition recommended on the website but I wouldn't say you need them. Questions for practice are from the textbooks anyways.

3x1 hour lectures, 1x2 hour workshop per week

2020, Semester 1

77 (H2A)

1x Midsem 15%, 5% weekly quizzes, 30% Assignments, 50% exam

This subject is absolute CANCER. I have never completed a more unorganized, poorly taught subject at uni.
The lectures are very boring, with lecture slides not being made by the lecturer, so half the time she would disregard information on the slide or sometimes confuse herself. Concepts taught are very interesting, but made me hate them because of the way they were taught. You go through questions in the lecture that are quite different to the exam. We didn't do many questions using vectors, and yet in the exam, a lot of questions required vector manipulation (e.g. cross product).

In the workshops, my tutor was awesome (he is the reason I gave this subject a 1 and not 0). He manage to teach us better than the lecturer helping us understand. However the endless assignments handed out in workshops take forever to do, and are very vague in what they want. We also weren't taught how to do half of each assignment till 2 days before it was due. The lecturer had very poor communication with the tutors aswell as organizing the course.

The material we were given to practice with (the tutorial sheets) were so difficult. I would be lucky if I could do 1/3 of the questions on the later sheets. These sheets included questions even the tutors couldn't do. So do not be depressed if you can't do them.

The exam was quite fair in the end, but fair questions were not what I was used to given the material we were given to practice with. Whilst they were fair, they were not what we practiced in lectures or tutorials so that was really annoying. We were not given any practice exams or any resources to prepare us other than the aforementioned cancerous tutorial sheets.

The mid sem had some mistakes in it and the weekly quizzes had to be postponed many times due to material not being taught yet. This subject was very frustrating and trying. To be honest the only reason I did so well was due to cramming in swot vac. I scored a 66% on the midsem and got about 80s on the assignments. So I was very surprised with my score.

If you don't have to do this subject. Don't. If you do, good luck, and prepare yourself for a semester long headache.

Yes, with screen capture

Katherine Stok

None

1 Out of 5

Nothing, don't buy anything.

3x Lectures, 1x 2hr Workshop

2018 sem 1

91

4 x 7.5% Assignments (2 each on Statics & Dynamics)
2 x 7.5% Tests in Week 6 & 12
5% Weekly Online Quizzes
50% Exam (Hurdle)

Simply put. This subject is tough. For most of you doing this as a core (perhaps not the Mechanical Majors), this will likely be the hardest subject in your undergrad, and is also coincidentally a pre-req for most of your third year subjects. Generally speaking, around 1/3 people will end up having to redo this subject. Many of the people in my class were those who had failed in Sem 2 2015, so as Hancock said in his review which I'd recommend checking out (Hancock's Review), it’s not a class to screw around in, and definitely not one you should consider winging. Please don’t. One consolation that you can take from Hancock's review is that the subject has been made a fair bit easier since his time, with parts of certain topics like Vibrations in Dynamics, and Eccentric Loading in Statics becoming much more simplified.
One thing I will add though is that unlike some other subjects, Eng Mech is possibly the fairest subjects I’ve done so far. What I mean by that is the mark you get at the end will be a direct representation of the effort and time you put in throughout the entire semester, unlike some others where you can get away with being a tad lazy, or where you can put in tonnes of work and still end up with a meh score (ahem, looking at you Calc 2). Due to the frantic pace at which it is taught, falling behind in this class is not something that I’d advise in the slightest, or SWOTVAC will be a nightmare.

The subject is split into two topics; Statics, and Dynamics. Both of which are 6 weeks long. Statics effectively starts off where the Mechanics module in ESD2 left off, with methods of joints and the like with trusses.
The new content in Statics begins with:
-Method of sections: a different way of analyzing reaction forces in trusses
-Shear Force Diagrams (SFD) and Bending Moment Diagrams (BMD) for differently loaded beams
-Stress, Strain, Poissons, Hooke’s Law
-Shear Stress, Shear Strain, ….
-Axial Loading, Superposition
-Thermal Stress
-Torsion
-Power
-Flexure
-Bending
-Eccentric Loading
-& finally, Deflection
As you can see, tonnes to learn, and this is only in the first 6 weeks. The content itself though is not too difficult to learn so long as you keep up to date with the lectures, though it does get slightly harder from around Torsion onwards. But I cannot stress this enough. Keep doing questions from whatever resource you can find. Every week, you are given a set of around 15-20 “Tutorial” questions (don’t even ask, made no sense to me either) that you can attempt at home for Statics on top of the Workshop questions. Though a few of the questions are beyond the course expectations, at least attempt every single one, and ones you can’t do or don’t understand, ask one of your tutors the next week. I reckon I bugged my tutor with at least 3-4 questions I was struggling with each workshop. You prepare yourself by doing these questions, you should not have any major issues with anything you do in the subject.

The Dynamics portion builds upon VCE Year 12 Physics for those of you who did it, and Physics 1. Much of the content is stuff that you would have covered in some capacity before, but likely not to a significant difficulty. Eng Mech covers all of it in much more detail, and something I really liked compared to the Statics section is that often you had to first think and figure out how the system you were given was going to work, before you started any calculations, whereas in Statics at times things got a tad monotonous with just plugging values into equations. The topics covered were:
-Kinematics
-Relative Motion (Polar, Rectangular, N-T Co-ordinate Systems)
-Particle Kinetics
-Work
-Impulse & Momentum Angular Impulse & Momentum
-Impact
-Forced Vibrations
-Rigid Body Motion, Absolute Motion analysis, Relative Velocity
-Instantaneous Centres, Relative Acceleration
-General Planar Motion
Whilst there aren’t as many topics covered in Dynamics, the content is much harder to understand, and I think for most people, it’s the inability to visualise what is going on. Often you’re left sitting there looking at the question thinking where do I even start. Rigid Body Motion onwards in particular can be horribly annoying to try and do at times. Again unfortunately I have to say the only way to get better at it is to do tonnes and tonnes of questions.

Whilst some other people I know who did Eng Mech had issues with the lectures, I really liked them. Lectures were very well organised and thought out. Though perhaps sometimes there was too much content crammed into a single hour. One massive thing I loved about the Eng Mech lectures is the way they are split up. In a normal semester, the first two lectures in the week would be intro lectures where you are taught the concepts, and the theory, whilst the third lecture is doing examples on the concepts taught in the two previous lectures. Though for me doing it over Summer meant it was two weeks crammed into one, and often 3 lectures in a single day, the method of introduction, followed by application and consolidation in that third lecture is something I’m a big fan of, and wish more Engineering subjects adopted this approach, rather than just droan on and on with theory. Also side note, don’t bother with the “Tutorial” 13 questions. Just a waste of time. Stuff is ridiculously hard, and there is no way any of it is going to come up in any assessment.

The workshops too were something that I absolutely loved, with again in particular the way they are set up being one of the best parts. Workshops are officially run across 2 hours, but the minimum recommended time you stay for is the first hour unless there is some experiment work to do for one of the assignments planned for the second half. Workshops usually start off with the head tutor doing a quick run down of the content covered in the lectures for the week again, followed by two generally fairly difficult questions which are explained fairly thoroughly and worked through by the two tutors. All this gets done in the first hour beyond which you are free to leave, or stay behind and get some help from the tutors regarding the questions done in class, or other questions you may have. I strongly, strongly recommend staying back and asking the tutors questions. It is extremely rare that tutors are this approachable, or more so this free to help with any queries, so make full use of them. I reckon I kinda got lucky and had two fairly awesome tutors who knew the content really really well, but especially the revered Engineering God Hancock who more than anything for a subject as tough as Eng Mech was able to basically dumb down and explain the concepts from the point of view of a student. Often explaining the concepts better than the lecturer himself. Though a few other people’s experiences varied, the vast majority of people I talked to always reckon the Eng Mech tutors as a whole are generally some of the best you will have in your course. I can honestly say that a massive reason to me doing half decent in this subject was due to the help Hancock gave me every single Workshop. (Hancock, if you’re reading this, sorry if I bugged you too much).

TL;DR. I absolutely loved the subject. It is by far the hardest I’ve done so far, but the quality of the lecturer, and tutors, as well as the organization of the subject as a whole meant that it was a subject that you actually enjoyed doing the work (at least in hindsight). Just ensure you keep up to date not only rocking up to lectures, but especially doing questions consistently, and ensure you’re on top of everything during semester when you still have the time so that come SWOTVAC, all you need is a quick refresher and you’re good to go for the exam.

Also, on a final note. What I’ve heard from those repeating the subject over Summer is that Semester 2 is kinda suicidal with Daniel Chung being head of the subject. Having done some of his past exams for revision, it’s hard not to agree. His exams don’t even nearly compare to Semester 1 or 2. If you’re willing to give up 2 months of your summer break, do it over summer. Else I’d say do it in Sem 1 if you can. The standard in Summer or Semester 1 is more than enough for your third year subjects where you expand on many of the concepts learnt in Eng Mech, and it's not worth the likely WAM drop.

Yes, with screen capture.

Dr. Cheng Chin (Both Statics & Dynamics)

4 Past exams available on library database, however, since the lecturers are vastly different each semester, only 2 or so would generally be entirely relevant to you. The others can be used as extra practice if you want. (No solutions though).

5 Out of 5

None officially. But Statics & Mechanics of Materials – Hibbeler (3rd Edition) as well as Engineering Mechanics: Dynamics – Meriam & Kraige (6th Edition) can be used as extra practice. Personally found the Statics textbook fairly helpful, but not the Dynamics as much.

3 x 1 hour Lectures (Weekly)
1 x 2 hour Workshop (Weekly)
(If done over Summer Sem, double the workload a week)

Summer Semester 2016

79 [H2A]

2 mid-semester tests (15%), weekly online quizzes (5%), 4 group assignments (30%), 3 hour exam (50%)

Firstly, this subject is not going to be a walk in the park. This subject packs a lot of foundational statics and dynamics into one semester. Doing the assignments in a group will either add a level of complexity to the subject, or make things easier. Choose wisely during the first workshop, as that will be your group for the entire semester. I happened to find myself in a group with people who would send me their work right at the end (handwritten of course), so I'd spend many nights trying to type up the work to resemble something professional.

Make sure you go to workshops and jot down the worked solutions the tutors go through. Those solutions to problems will help you learn how to tackle problems. Also, the online quizzes generally tend to be questions from the previous week's tutorial, so make sure you understand those questions so you can ace those quizzes for an easy 5%.

The mid-semester tests aren't too bad, but make sure you check your multiple choice answers, as it's very easy to make a calculation error that yields a similar, but wrong answer.
The dynamics component is probably twice as difficult as the statics component, so make sure you maximise your grades in the statics component. The dynamics component in the exam is rather difficult, so make sure you really know your statics, so you can get some easy marks. Know the difference between method of joints, and method of sections.

Yes, with/without screen capture

Professor Joe Klewicki, Dr David Ackland, Prof Ivan Marusic

Yes, two. There's also practice problems

3/5

No prescribed texts, but workshops take questions from: Meriam JL and Kraige LG, Engineering Mechanics : Dynamics 7th Edition, HGibbeler RC, Statistics and Mechanics of Materials 3rd Edition

3 x 1 hour lectures, 1 x 2 hour workshops

2016, Semester 1

H2B

2 mid semester tests - 15% (7.5% each)
Weekly Online Quizzes (pre workshop) - 5%
4 Assignments - 30% (7.5% each)
Final Exam - 50%

They were a big nuisance of this subject. While the practical component was nothing special, and the MATLAB coding was relatively simple. The assignment questions were really time consuming and a bit of a pain to do.
what made it worse is that each of the assignment were to be done in a report format and with a limit of only 10 pages, which made things even worse.
They are group assignments are you get to form your group of 3 in the first workshop,
Having a good group is very important if you want to do well on assignments

This is the prerequisite subject for Mechanical, Civil and Electrical Engineering, so chances are that if youre doing any engineering discipline apart from Chemical and Biomedical, you will be doing this subject.
This subject is divided into 2 categories:
1. Statics
2. Dynamics

This subject is seriously heavy on the content, it requires a constant and thorough amount of work just to keep up, so dont expect to be bludging around and getting lucky at all.

Overall, this subject is quite interesting and gives a fundamental understanding of mechanical and structural engineering. There is alot of effort required in this subject, and the content can get really difficult but if you go through every single resource that they have provided, then you will recieve a decent enough mark.

I was expecting the absolute worse for this exam, and with my average being quite bad before the exams, I had to put in a shit ton of work during SWOTVAC. Expecting the worse helped out, and attempt to work on any of the sample exams, mid sems or workshops questions to get you ready.
The exam itself wasnt too bad, we had to only do 5 questions out of 6 (meaning you can leave out one topic thats not your best,) this helped out, plus the 3 hour time on the exam helped out alot in going through your work and correcting any mistakes that you made.
I strongly suggest you all to stay all the way till 3 hrs, i know most people who wanted to leave early and because of this, their final mark wasnt anywhere near they expected.

Yes, with screen capture

Dr. David Ackland

the lectures only teach us the bare minimum of the content, the first few weeks are relatively easy and are basically a follow through of the mechanics content in ESD2. But from week 3 onwards, the content starts to get quite difficult and the pacing of the subject gets faster and faster.
Rocking up to lectures isnt really helping you in learning the content and it is strongly advised to look through the content at the end of the week to understand and keep up from whats taught.

Overall, the lectures arent really that helpful, they only involve one or two of the worked examples and they are perhaps the easiest examples you can ever encounter, which wont really be asked on the exam.The questions in the statics component can vary significantly so again, the lectures were the worst part of the subject.

The first mid sem is on the statics component till week 7. This mid sem was pretty hard, but thankfully they scaled everyones marks up by 8 because of how bad everyone else did.

because of this, the second mid sem on dynamics was made quite easy and with only some amount of work, and basic understanding, it was quite easy to achieve a mark over 80.

Yes, about 2 of them, solutions are not provided but

3.5 Out of 5

Nope

3 1hr lectures per week
1 2hr workshop per weed
total: 5hrs per week

The 2hr workshops are usually divided into 2 parts, the first hour involves going through weekly workshop questions that are given, and the next part is usually an experiment that is related to the assignments.
The workshops are seriously helpful, because the tutors go through the ridiiculously hard tutorial questions in a detailed manner and gives us a thorough insight of the content.
while the weekly questions have full worked solutions provided, the solutions only give us a small explanation on whats really done and are really vague which is why i really recommend everyone to pay full attention and take down notes on the first part of the tute.

Workshop question sheets are divided into 2 parts, the first part are doable questions and require some sort of understanding of the content but the second part is what really gets you thinking. and are almost impossible to do after week 4.

Workshop prelabs are also recommended to be done before every workshop and they get you ready for whats coming.

2015 Semester 1

H1

5% weekly quiz + workshop attendance (only get marks for quiz if you turn up to your workshop)
4 x 7.5% assignments (2 on statics/solid mechanics and 2 on dynamics)
2 x 7.5% mid-semester held in Week 6 and Week 12
50% Final exam (also a hurdle requirement)

So I was looking through the subject reviews randomly and thought I'd done one for this subject but apparently not, because the link took me to Hancock's review where he had a very different impression of it to me. As a took this subject a year ago now, some of the details might be a little hazy, but I don't think I've forgotten enough to make this review invalid.

The subject matter is pretty obvious by the name of the subject. You're looking at static mechanics in weeks 1-6 (culminating in a MST on statics in week 6), then moving over to dynamic mechanics in weeks 7-12 (with another MST in week 12). I found statics to be easier, and I think this is the prevailing view among the other students I knew.

The lecturers are a bit of a mixed bag. There was two streams: Ackland took one stream for both statics and dynamics, and Klewicki (statics) and Cheng (dynamics) split the other one. The lecturers all had far different ways of presenting material: Ackland would probably go the most traditional route, presenting slides and writing examples using the document camera, but was not very good at explaining concepts; Klewicki would do the majority of his examples on the whiteboard (made it a nightmare for lecture recordings) but I found was the best at explaining things; Cheng would use a tablet to just annotate the slides he presented, and although he was a bit hard to understand, I found him better at explaining the dynamics section than Ackland.

Anyway, I think the main reason I disliked (maybe even hated) this subject was that I basically had zero background in physics. I hadn't done physics in VCE and – as I'm majoring in Civil Eng via the Environments Degree – I hadn't done basically anything physics related in first year. Therefore, it's pretty tough to come into a subject where the majority of the cohort has done VCE Physics Units 1-4 and Physics 1 & 2 in first year and feel like your up to scratch. Additionally, only MATLAB stuff I knew was the very basic stuff you learn in Linear Algebra. I see the Environments course has now added the "Structural Environments" subject that seems to fix some of these issues.

One thing I'd stress for this subject is to pay attention for every minute of the lecture. I found that if I wasn't paying attention for just one slide it was pretty hard to recover. On a related note, don't fall behind. There is masses of work to be done and you pretty much have an eternal assignment (i.e. when one assignment ends, you immediately get another).

And to be honest, I was pretty useless with the group assignments. I'm generally one to take charge of a group and sort of set the standards, but I became pretty passive in this group as I had no idea what I was doing. That said, the assignments were pretty long, complicated and difficult, even for the people that did have a decent grasp on things.

The only reason I passed this subject was because I did I ridiculous amount of cramming in the last week before the exam. I basically did everything I should have been doing all semester: I watched every lecture (and paid attention), went over basically all tute questions, developed a much more effective problem solving approach, and re-did the MSTs (with much better results). But the marking is super, super easy (likely as a result of this subject's high failure rate). In every assessment I got a better mark than I expected or deserved. I came out of the exam thinking I could have failed and ended up with a H1.
So that was more of a boring autobiographical piece than a review, but overall Engineering Mechanics is the most difficult and stress inducing subject I have encountered at university so far, partly because I was poorly prepared for it, partly because the Environments degree was broken (hopefully fixed with the introduction of Structural Environments), partly because it was poorly taught (by Ackland at least), and partly because it was an undoubtably tricky subject.

Yes, with screen capture.

David Ackland, Joe Klewicki and Cheng Chin

Yes, 6 available, however no solutions are provided.

1.5 Out of 5

There is both a statics and a dynamics textbook. I'd recommend skipping the statics and probably buying the dynamics

3 x one hour lectures and 1 x 2 hour workshop per week.

Semester 1, 2013

H1

5% weekly quiz + workshop attendance (only get marks for quiz if you turn up to your workshop)
4 x 7.5% assignments (2 on statics/solid mechanics and 2 on dynamics)
2 x 7.5% mid-semester held in Week 6 and Week 12
50% Final exam

Ok, Engineering Mechanics, where do I start? Considering this is a core subject for Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering, this is definitely a fundamental course which teaches you the basis of dynamics and solid mechanics. Given that the last class in Semester 2, 2012 had a fail rate of ~35-40% (from what I've heard), this isn't a class to screw around with. So, let's begin.

ENGR20004 is split into two six week topics. The first major topic is Statics and Introductory Solid Mechanics. The first two lectures cover all the Mechanics material from ESD2 again, things like moments/torques, method of joints and what not. This shouldn't be an issue for most students, however, some Environment students come into ENGR20004 after doing ENVS10003: Constructing Environments so I have no idea what they cover. It should be noted that pre-reqs for Environments students has changed to ENVS10009: Structural Environments post-2013 because many students from the BEnvs degree struggled with the material of ENGR20004 without a solid physics background. Again, just what I've heard, but I can understand that this subject would be heaps more difficult if I didn't do Physics 1.

Workshops are a mixture of assignment work, tutorial questions and experiments. When there is an assignment due, the first hour of the workshop is dedicated to tutorial style questions, and the last hour is dedicated to assignment work with your group. Make sure you choose your group wisely, as you are stuck with them the entire semester. Some of the assignments had practical components, such as using weights to experimentally measure shear force and bending moments in beams, and using an Instron Compression Machine to measure the yield strength and other qualities of 3 materials through compression failure (this was quite cool!). These are also done in the workshop's 2nd hour where applicable.

The Statics portion of the class covered topics such as:
Shear Force / Bending Moment diagrams
Stress and strain (shear, normal, bending)
Poisson's ratio and superposition
Axial loading and thermal stress
Torsion, twisting, power transmission
Flexure, Combined Loadings
Elastic Curves and Deflections

I especially found that the first 4 weeks of Statics was pretty ok, and then the difficultly ramped up in the last 2 weeks. Nothing that is not overly manageable, but the content did take a swing to the "da fuq" side in my mind for a bit. Most of the material hasn't been seen before (except E = FL/Ad from Year 12 Physics) so you want to make sure you're solid with all of the material after each week. It is incredibly easy to fall behind in tutorial questions so make SURE you do them at home. There is no way you can complete all of the tutorial questions in 1 hour. The mid-semester for Statics was quite straight forward to be honest. My advice is to make sure you can do bending moment and shear force diagrams well, as they are built upon in towards the latter end of the Statics section.

The Dynamics portion of the class covered:
Motion in Rectangular, Polar and N-T coordinates
Constrained and Relative Motion
Particle Kinetics, Work and Energy
Linear Impulse and Momentum
Angular Impulse and Momentum
Impact and Coefficient of Restitution
Equations of Motion and Vibrational Response
Forced Vibration
Rigid Body Motion, Absolute Motion analysis, Relative velocity
Instantaneous centres, relative velocity equation, relative acceleration equation
General Planar Motion

If you had completed Physics 1 with a decent grade, most of this stuff (first 3-4 weeks) should have been seen before, at the very least. The topics are built upon and expanding from first year mechanics, with harder and more ambiguous questions being asked. The difficult topics in my mind were the last 2 weeks again: rigid body motion and general planar motion. Holy shit was this stuff hard on the tutorial questions. Make sure you do all of them, or at least attempt all of them. If I was going to be completely honest, I couldn't complete 75% of the last tutorial sheet because of it's difficulty.

My general advice for this class is to NOT FALL BEHIND. Make sure you do each of the tutorial questions and keep onto of the assignments (which aren't easy) every week. All in all, ENGR20004 was a very fun class, with interesting topics in my opinion. Now, I've just got to choose between Electrical and Mechanical Engineering as a Masters specialisation...

Yes, with screen capture.

Dr David Ackland and Professor Joe Klewicki

Yes, 6 available, however no solutions are provided.

5 Out of 5

I didn't buy any books, although I heard that they are extremely good if you are rusty on solid mechanics or introductory physics. I reckon that the lecture notes provided are sufficient however.

3 x one hour lectures and 1 x 2 hour workshop per week.

Semester 1, 2013

100 [H1]