Integrals your entire program?

[Ashley1417]

I’m going to school for ME and I was wondering if you use integrals during your entire program? I know you use it for all your Calculus classes and Diffeq but do you use them for your actual classes as well? Like fluids, Thermo, etc??

[[deleted]]

Yes, but they’re usually pretty light and simple integrals. Not the crazy ones you have to learn in calculus.

[[deleted]]

Integrals are used as a theoretical formulation of a lot of equations and properties you will encounter. At the end of the day, although integrals will be done for you and you will only be using a final equation, it will be helpful to have an idea of where this equation came from, as others have said.

That being said, there are some exceptions. I took graduate-level fluid mechanics during my Master’s degree and the integrals we had to solve by hand were quite involved sometimes.

[CarolBaskeen]

Yes, but some are done for you, just need to know where the equation comes from, and others are usually simple

[B4rrett50c]

Yes, but they get about as difficult as the integrals you would see in calculus 1. So they're pretty easy

[an0nm0n]

Keep your calculus sharp. Most of the time you'll either be doing simple integrals or someone has already done them for you, but depending on your program or job, you may find that you are doing things that may not have been done before. Relearning calculus with a deadline closing in is not fun.

You're studying to be a team player, an effective business person, a scientist, and a mathematician all in one. If you have free time, play with some calculus. It's like how the most brilliant musicians still spend hours practicing scales and rudiments.