Who's in it or has taken it?

9/24/2008 12:01:57 AM

That's controls lab right? PID controllers?

If so I took it a few years ago.

9/24/2008 10:05:01 AM

waste of time

9/24/2008 6:27:25 PM

easy

9/25/2008 12:01:10 AM

The lab was nothing. A little weird. I didn't totally understand what we were doing, but in the end, there were no quizzes or tests or homework or anything.

The class is a different story, though.

9/25/2008 12:43:33 PM

Quote :

"The class is a different story, though."

Oh boy.

Dr. Silverberg.

That guy is one of the smartest guys I've ever met.

9/30/2008 2:12:49 PM

silverberg is an awesome guy, but his teaching style in dynamics blew

9/30/2008 3:53:02 PM

I flat out didn't understand what the hell was going on in that class.

I remember our first homework problem.

Two gears of different sizes, a spring attached across the tops (12 o'clock of one to 12 o'clock of the other), a damper attached across the bottoms.
Took me a fucking forever to do it (and I did it wrong).
When we turned it in, we asked for the answer, so he says "ummmm, I haven't really even given it any thought since i made it up, but let's give it a go." Within five minutes he was done. Turns out to be 8 solutions/equilibrium points. And we were all like "damn dude." I believe one or two people in the class actually did it 100% right over the course of a week.

Dude is insanely smart. But his teaching style didn't mesh with me. Some people love it. But I spent that semester confused as hell.

9/30/2008 4:13:18 PM

Quote :

"but his teaching style in dynamics blew"

I would have agreed with you for the first part of the semester. But as the class progressed, I actually got used to his teaching style and it really started to make sense to me. It was kinda weird.

I had a similar situation with our first homework assignment... me and my study group worked on it for like 5 hours, went to his office hours, worked on it for a few more hours and finally understood it. After turning it in, he said he did it in like 5 minutes. That was the last homework assignment that I truly understood.

Another thing that really impressed me was that he never had any notes that he read from when he was teaching. He would come in and be like "okay what topic where we on last class? What was the last part we were on?" and he would just go from there without even hesitating.

10/1/2008 10:12:29 AM

^Yes- his ability to pluck the discussion from anywhere had me impressed

10/1/2008 11:14:26 AM

im in it now.... kinda sucks and appears to be a waste of time

10/3/2008 3:46:13 AM

I really don't agree that having to regurgitate derivations is helpful in the real world. And I hated the fact that ~30% of your grade came from your ability to memorize and rewrite the derivations.

10/3/2008 9:49:12 AM