From Professor Ruina, instructor for MAE 2030, Dynamics, Spring 2014

I like this course and most students do also.  But it is also somewhat challenging for most students, at least here and there.

 Things go best if you come prepared.  Here is what I expect at the start.

 ODEs. 

 You should know, in a familiar kind of way, not a rote kind-of-remember it kind of way, these equations and their solutions:

 \dot x       = 0

 \dot x       = c       any constant

 \dot x       = f(t)    any function

 \dot x       = ax

 \ddot x      = 0 or const or f(t)

 \ddot x + cx = 0

 \ddot x – cx = 0

 You should be able to code up Euler’s method of numerical solution to  any equation of this form, without looking up anything:

  \dot x      = f(x,t)  (with f(x,t) given. 

 STATICS:

 You should be able to competently do any homework, prelim or final exam problem from the Statics part of TAM 2020. If you got them wrong when you took the class, you should learn how to do them right. The Strength part (stress, strain, etc) is not used at all in 2030.

 Especially this means being competent at Free Body Diagrams and at Vectors (dot product, cross product, solving vector equations).  You can review all of this in your TAM 2020 text or in my book which is online here:

 http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/Book/

 MATLAB:

 You should be able to get around in Matlab.  This means being able to make plots, write functions, write loops, vaguely understand error messages, etc.

  If you have NO experience with Matlab you could be fully\ up to speed if you spend an honest 2 hours a day, for a week, doing any Matlab tutorials. 

  If you can do all of these without looking up anything, you should be fine. Best is if you can do them more than one way. This list is not exhaustive, just representative of the kind of thing you should be able to do.

   * Plot a circle that looks round.

  * Find  1^2 + 2^2 + 3^2 + … 100^2 using loops

  * Find  1^2 + 2^2 + 3^2 + … 100^2 using .^

  * Write a function that takes as input any list of  numbers and finds, without using the matlab median  command, the median number in the list.

  * Given any two lists of numbers, make an array that is the times table for the two lists.

  * Euler’s method (See ODEs above).