Mechanical Systems for Morning Section?

[Waterguy]

I am taking the Thermal / Fluids in Oct. & have to start reviewing the mechanical systems portion.

Can you please recommend the chapters (from MERM) that are critical in the morning? It would be a big help to know the sections that need more focus.

Thanks,

 

[tmacier]

All are important.

Sorry, but you are starting to prepare for the most difficult you likely will encounter in your professional career. The morning section covers a broad area of topics, with most covered in the MERM.

Tim

 

[Krakosky]

Cover ch 14-58.

 

[Waterguy]

thanks for the responses!

are there a lot of problems from this section? If so, what's the difficulty level?

Getting concerned as I am not sure about the amount of time to spend on this section (and don't work in this field as well)

Any suggestions will be helpful.

Thanks

 

[Jonhnny123]

The content will change for each exam. The April '12 exam will be different than the Oct. '12 one. Your best bet is to check the distribution of topics from the NCEES website. That'll give you a idea of what topics are in the morning session along with the amount of questions. Even that is just a general guide though.

That's part of the challenge of the exam though. As a PE you need to be very compenent in your area of expertise, but also capable in a broader spectrum of engineering topics.

 

[ikesdsu]

There is no specific section in the morning, it can be anything in the MERM.

 

[Charlie Plumb]

Seriously, I'm sorry to say, but these responses do not seem very helpful.

I would say take a look at the NCEES practice test and study the morning material to that level. Don't worry about the 1 hour problems in the MERM for morning sections. Most of those "1 Hour" questions in the MERM required iterations and assumptions anyways which is not only unhelpful, it's a waste of time IMO. No problem on the PE exam will require assumptions or iterations. It will require you to think on your feet though and you will see material that you have never seen before. Just be prepared to be thrown off a bit.

I felt that the morning section was much easier then expected. Although I have heard that it just depends on when you take the test (april or oct) the morning can be very difficult as well. But the NCEES practice test was a good gauge for the level of depth of those questions. For instance if you are doing T/F I would not worry about doing anything more then breezing through advanced machine design. There may be a formula or two that you will need to grab out of there so you will need to be familiar with the section, but you will not need to be able to do all the MERM problems.

 

[ikesdsu]

While I agree with Charlie to a point, in my opinion you should be carefull how much you breeze through the other sections that are not in the T/F afternoon exam. While the problems in the morning are easier they can be on almost everything. You could give yourself a false sense of security that you understand something if you don't really review it. Believe me, you don't want to take this test a second time, and if you study a little extra but you only take it once, it was well worth it.

 

[Waterguy]

Thanks everyone for their feedback. I would try to skim through these sections as well (if time permits)

Finding some (or actually more than half) of the problems in the practice problems to be very challenging & real lenghty - not helping in building up the confidence !!!!!!!!!!

 

[Charlie Plumb]

Those practice problems were very irritating to me...and it really threw my confidence off in the beginning too. Although it may be helpful in the beginning to kind of bring you up to speed and get your brain thinking. The frusterating thing is that a majority of the problems were so difficult that they were a waste of time. The difference between the problems in the MERM and the morning NCEES test problems was vast. So why kill yourself doing these incredibly long problems with sometimes equations that were not even in the book. I can't tell you how many times I looked at a problem for 15 mintues before turning to the back and realizing that he "assumed" that the surface temperature is 70 F....or something like that. I'm kind of carrying on here sorry, but I think the practice problems are mostly from a bygone era of 1 hour NCEES problems.

Don't get me wrong they are great for the afternoon material, because you will need to know that backwards and forwards, but for the morning material it's overkill. It's just very difficult to gauge how what and how to study for that morning material especially when you are just starting to study.

 

[Charlie Plumb]

And good point ikesdu...you want to error on doing too many problems rather than not enough.