TAM 211 or 210

boneh3ad
Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:30:32 +0000

I did mechanical engineering in undergrad at UIUC, just like the OP. The MechSE department only requires TAM 210, so there is no real reason to take 211 unless you just want to out of your own intellectual curiosity. However, I know tons of civil and aerospace engineers who took 211, and they didn’t complain any more during the 211 portion of the course than they did during the 210 portion. In other words, the additional topics covered in 211 are not necessarily harder, it just just additional work that you don’t necessarily have to do unless you are just interested. I suppose taking 211 might have its advantages, but for the most part, 210 is fine for a mechanical engineer.

The additional topics are, from the course catalog: “moment of inertia, polar moment of inertia, and product of inertia; virtual work; hydrostatic pressure; applications of statics in design.”

Those are not terribly difficult topics. In fact, you will end up learning most of them in future classes anyway, so it is just a matter of if you want to learn it on its own or learn it later as part of something else.