MECH&AE 162A
Introduction to Mechanisms and Mechanical Systems
Description: Lecture, four hours; discussion, two hours; outside study, six hours. Enforced requisites: courses M20 (or Computer Science 31), 102. Analysis and synthesis of mechanisms and mechanical systems. Kinematics, dynamics, and mechanical advantages of machinery. Displacement velocity and acceleration analyses of linkages. Fundamental law of gearing and various gear trains. Computer-aided mechanism design and analysis. Letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Greg Glenn is the biggest tool god's green earth has ever given us. What have we ever done to deserve Greg Glenn? The deal with this guy was that he got some lecture notes from another teacher. he hadn't looked at them and just showed up to class. first of all he was breezing through the power points. he went through 4 weeks worth of lecture by the end of first week and then he looked like a baby who just pooped his pants. none of us knew what the hell he was talking about and if anyone had a question he told them to go to his office (his office hours being once a week at late hours in some god forsaken place). on top of this, he couldn't even do his own examples. he was trying to show us how to find instant centers and he couldn't even do it; they weren't even that hard. he gave us a project and 10 days to do and basically everyone turned in his example and got 100%. easy midterm and final I think averaged 80. he gave 70% of everyone a B. you had to get >95 to get an A (that's how the curve worked out) other than that I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to let Greg Glenn teach. i wouldn't even want him to be my TA let alone teach. plus he looks like a retard anyway. when's the last time you had a teacher in skater shorts and flip flops. I love you Greg Glenn.
Greg Glenn is the biggest tool god's green earth has ever given us. What have we ever done to deserve Greg Glenn? The deal with this guy was that he got some lecture notes from another teacher. he hadn't looked at them and just showed up to class. first of all he was breezing through the power points. he went through 4 weeks worth of lecture by the end of first week and then he looked like a baby who just pooped his pants. none of us knew what the hell he was talking about and if anyone had a question he told them to go to his office (his office hours being once a week at late hours in some god forsaken place). on top of this, he couldn't even do his own examples. he was trying to show us how to find instant centers and he couldn't even do it; they weren't even that hard. he gave us a project and 10 days to do and basically everyone turned in his example and got 100%. easy midterm and final I think averaged 80. he gave 70% of everyone a B. you had to get >95 to get an A (that's how the curve worked out) other than that I have no idea who thought it was a good idea to let Greg Glenn teach. i wouldn't even want him to be my TA let alone teach. plus he looks like a retard anyway. when's the last time you had a teacher in skater shorts and flip flops. I love you Greg Glenn.
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2017 - Professor Hopkins is easy to understand, though sometimes he went through lecture slides pretty fast. He cares about students understanding the material and he is very knowledgeable about it. One issue I had with the course were the homework assignments given. I did not feel that lectures well-prepared students for them and I needed to turn to the textbook to learn the material. Overall though, Hopkins made the class enjoyable and I do believe that I learned a lot about mechanisms and mechanical design. His lecture slides are pretty detailed and I feel confident about turning to them in the future when I enter industry!
Fall 2017 - Professor Hopkins is easy to understand, though sometimes he went through lecture slides pretty fast. He cares about students understanding the material and he is very knowledgeable about it. One issue I had with the course were the homework assignments given. I did not feel that lectures well-prepared students for them and I needed to turn to the textbook to learn the material. Overall though, Hopkins made the class enjoyable and I do believe that I learned a lot about mechanisms and mechanical design. His lecture slides are pretty detailed and I feel confident about turning to them in the future when I enter industry!
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Fall 2019 - Class was weighted 15 HW, 32.5 Midterm, 32.5 Final, and 20 Project. The teacher himself is a nice guy, but his lectures were boring and not very helpful. He only reads off of slides provided to him by a different professor. The exams were not too bad if you are able to grasp the homework. I could have saved a lot of time if I read the slides by myself instead of going to lecture. He gave an extra credit problem on the first exam but not on the Final. The bulk of the final project was writing a lengthy MATLAB script. He doesn't curve the class but an 'A' cutoff is 91 and a 'B' cutoff is a 76. Go to discussion because practice problems were useful
Fall 2019 - Class was weighted 15 HW, 32.5 Midterm, 32.5 Final, and 20 Project. The teacher himself is a nice guy, but his lectures were boring and not very helpful. He only reads off of slides provided to him by a different professor. The exams were not too bad if you are able to grasp the homework. I could have saved a lot of time if I read the slides by myself instead of going to lecture. He gave an extra credit problem on the first exam but not on the Final. The bulk of the final project was writing a lengthy MATLAB script. He doesn't curve the class but an 'A' cutoff is 91 and a 'B' cutoff is a 76. Go to discussion because practice problems were useful
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Lectures: Reverse lecture style, where you watch lectures on Youtube and he does examples in class. The lectures are from Hopkins, who is a mechanisms expert in his own right. He's got good lectures, and depending on your preferred learning method, you may or may not enjoy it. I highly recommend attending Matthe's supplementary lectures as the examples he goes over are similar to homework and exams. Homework: Not too long, 3-4 problems per week on average. Discussion: Because of the reverse lecture style, the discussion takes up one of the lecture spots. Definitely go to the discussion, the TA will go over problems ripped straight from old exams. If you're resourceful you can figure out how Matthes likes to structure his exam questions. Exams: Like the homework but slightly more difficult, with longer questions. Nothing unfair but there are a lot of topics. Project: The best and worst part of the course. The design problem itself is pretty fun. If you get a good group it'll be pretty straightforward, arguably pretty MATLAB heavy but not bad. If you get a bad group you'll find yourself shouldering a large portion of the work alone. In addition, the groups are 10 people, so unless you somehow have 9 friends taking the class with you, you're going to have a few slackers. Good luck! Overall: Don't get complacent and think this is 102 pt.2. While in some ways it is, it's a bit less intuitive if you don't practice. Make sure to keep up with both recorded and live lectures. If you fall behind, it's hard to learn the material all at once, as there's a lot of nuance.
Fall 2023 - Lectures: Reverse lecture style, where you watch lectures on Youtube and he does examples in class. The lectures are from Hopkins, who is a mechanisms expert in his own right. He's got good lectures, and depending on your preferred learning method, you may or may not enjoy it. I highly recommend attending Matthe's supplementary lectures as the examples he goes over are similar to homework and exams. Homework: Not too long, 3-4 problems per week on average. Discussion: Because of the reverse lecture style, the discussion takes up one of the lecture spots. Definitely go to the discussion, the TA will go over problems ripped straight from old exams. If you're resourceful you can figure out how Matthes likes to structure his exam questions. Exams: Like the homework but slightly more difficult, with longer questions. Nothing unfair but there are a lot of topics. Project: The best and worst part of the course. The design problem itself is pretty fun. If you get a good group it'll be pretty straightforward, arguably pretty MATLAB heavy but not bad. If you get a bad group you'll find yourself shouldering a large portion of the work alone. In addition, the groups are 10 people, so unless you somehow have 9 friends taking the class with you, you're going to have a few slackers. Good luck! Overall: Don't get complacent and think this is 102 pt.2. While in some ways it is, it's a bit less intuitive if you don't practice. Make sure to keep up with both recorded and live lectures. If you fall behind, it's hard to learn the material all at once, as there's a lot of nuance.
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Most Helpful Review
I took Professor Warren for MAE 162A this past quarter (Fall 2012). She was a very effective instructor and many times brought actual parts to class to show how certain mechanisms worked. She lectures from powerpoint slides that have pretty good animations that also help you visualize how certain linkages and mechanisms work. She also writes on the blackboard to work out example problems, so you aren't just staring at powerpoint slides the whole time. As for the midterm and final, they are pretty straightforward. She doesn't throw any curveballs on her exams and she even provided us a mock final exam where we worked out all the problems in class. Just study what she tells you and you'll do fine on them. Average was pretty high for both exams though. The project is assigned by the TA and can be time consuming. However our TA, Chih-Yung was good at giving us hints. Also Professor Warren provided us sample code for a four-bar linkage, so that helped greatly with the project. In this class, the book wasn't very helpful, and I just relied on Professor Warren's notes to do the homework and exams. She allows a single sided 8.5 x 11 page of notes for the midterm and a double sided 8.5 x 11 page of notes for the final exam. I would advise you to write the definitions of certain terms discussed in class because her exams usually have a short-answer portion as well as computational problems. If she's teaching MAE 162A, I would definitely recommend you take her.
I took Professor Warren for MAE 162A this past quarter (Fall 2012). She was a very effective instructor and many times brought actual parts to class to show how certain mechanisms worked. She lectures from powerpoint slides that have pretty good animations that also help you visualize how certain linkages and mechanisms work. She also writes on the blackboard to work out example problems, so you aren't just staring at powerpoint slides the whole time. As for the midterm and final, they are pretty straightforward. She doesn't throw any curveballs on her exams and she even provided us a mock final exam where we worked out all the problems in class. Just study what she tells you and you'll do fine on them. Average was pretty high for both exams though. The project is assigned by the TA and can be time consuming. However our TA, Chih-Yung was good at giving us hints. Also Professor Warren provided us sample code for a four-bar linkage, so that helped greatly with the project. In this class, the book wasn't very helpful, and I just relied on Professor Warren's notes to do the homework and exams. She allows a single sided 8.5 x 11 page of notes for the midterm and a double sided 8.5 x 11 page of notes for the final exam. I would advise you to write the definitions of certain terms discussed in class because her exams usually have a short-answer portion as well as computational problems. If she's teaching MAE 162A, I would definitely recommend you take her.
Most Helpful Review
Good professor, though a lot of the class seemed to be review from kinematics, just with more emphasis on linkages. A note on the project: I felt that due to the CS requirement for this class, we were expected to write a program to solve it. The teacher and TA's also made this seem to be the case. However, if you do write a program, it will take way too long to solve for an answer, because there are too many variables. I wrote mine in simple fashion (it's fairly straightforward once you have the equations), and you could probably achieve more efficiency if you solve recursively somehow, however, I felt that it was simply too time intensive to do so. Especially since CS31 is a pretty basic course, and methods of approaching the project aren't discussed much in class. It's very frustrating if you do try to write a program, as you can't really tell how close you are to a solution, either, you just have to wait for it to continue running until done. There are a few other methods for solving the project, which he does discuss in class. I ended up solving it over the course of a night using guess and check, whereas I had had my program running (with intermittent restarts to address bugs) for almost a week on two computers. I was very frustrated at starting a week early, only to end up figuring out I wasted my time and then having to stay up all night the day before it was due. I mentioned to the professor that I thought he should tell students that it can take a long time to solve computationally, because it really does waste a lot of time, but I thought I'd say that here, as well. That was how things worked out for me, at least.
Good professor, though a lot of the class seemed to be review from kinematics, just with more emphasis on linkages. A note on the project: I felt that due to the CS requirement for this class, we were expected to write a program to solve it. The teacher and TA's also made this seem to be the case. However, if you do write a program, it will take way too long to solve for an answer, because there are too many variables. I wrote mine in simple fashion (it's fairly straightforward once you have the equations), and you could probably achieve more efficiency if you solve recursively somehow, however, I felt that it was simply too time intensive to do so. Especially since CS31 is a pretty basic course, and methods of approaching the project aren't discussed much in class. It's very frustrating if you do try to write a program, as you can't really tell how close you are to a solution, either, you just have to wait for it to continue running until done. There are a few other methods for solving the project, which he does discuss in class. I ended up solving it over the course of a night using guess and check, whereas I had had my program running (with intermittent restarts to address bugs) for almost a week on two computers. I was very frustrated at starting a week early, only to end up figuring out I wasted my time and then having to stay up all night the day before it was due. I mentioned to the professor that I thought he should tell students that it can take a long time to solve computationally, because it really does waste a lot of time, but I thought I'd say that here, as well. That was how things worked out for me, at least.
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