MMAN2300 - Engineering Mechanics 2
Ease: 6/10
Acceleration analysis and vibration analysis takes a lot of work and time to do. Instant centers are just impossible for me.
Content: 6/10
Basically, this course is split into two parts; Part A deals with velocity/acceleration analysis and work-energy systems and you have to do this weird instant center method where you draw lots of lines and intersections to do velocity/acceleration analysis. Also, there is a very short topic regarding gears which are pretty easy to do. Part B deals with vibrations of 1 and 2 degrees of freedom systems as well as other types of vibrations. IMO Part B is the interesting topic in this course.
Also comes with 2 assignments and 4 quizzes (worth 5% each so it's ok if you flunk 1-2) as well as 2 labs worth 10% each (IIRC) so focus on the assignments and labs as well.
Lecturers:
Part A - Zhongxiao Peng: 7/10
Decent lecturer, always uploads her working for examples that she went through in the lectures. Can be too fast for some, personally she was a bit too fast for my liking.
Part B - Nicole Kessissoglou: 5/10
Had a rather awkward experience with her since MMAN1300 - she usually reads off slides although her notes are quite good. First couple of lectures were pretty bad so most students opted to not go. Usually just reads off slides, after the lack of attendance she kind of stepped up her game, but at that point I didn't go to her lectures at all.
Tutor: 8/10
Had two tutors, Felipe and Jack. Chill dudes, explains stuff pretty well and covered tutorials decently.
Overall: 6/10
Try to do all the problems and keep on practicing to get the feel of the types of questions that will pop out.
BIOM9420 - Clinical Laboratory Science
Ease: 6.5/10
Lots of things from different types of subjects to learn. Bull your way through the exams, but don't forget to brush up on the engineering-type problem solving questions.
Content: 7/10
You get a variety of topics from a variety of lecturers in many different aspects of biomedical engineering. Some of them are quite interesting, like DNA analysis and clinical imaging systems such as MRI or CT scans. The hard part is when you have to do all these engineering application-type questions. You do not really have a set equation to use, mostly you just have multiple variables and you combine those with basic equations such as ideal gas law to find another variable, and most of the time you don't really know what equation to use, if any.
Quizzes are pretty decent, some may be tricky but all questions are manageable.
The assignments require you to compile reports after a major lab session. An important thing to note is that you have to exactly match the criteria and bull a lot to get marks, because what my team did was match the criteria without bull and we got pretty crap marks. Or maybe the marker just hates us.
Lecturers: 6/10
Too many lecturers to count, notable ones are Megan Lord (the convenor for the course) and 'Big Boss' Ross Odell.
Tutor: 4/10
Had Brooke as a tutor, most of the time she speaks too fast and directs things too quickly. At least if slowed down her explanations are okay. But that happens rarely, if any, and she was gone for around half the semester.
Overall: 5/10
Some interesting topics, but too much assortment of content to go through. And the assignments just screwed me over, so I might be a bit biased.
ELEC1111 - Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering
Ease: 3/10
Even as a second year I find this course pretty challenging on its own. Try to do a lot of practice to get the hang of the type of questions that you may face.
Content: 6/10
Early content isn't really interesting, learning new theorems about circuits and how to simplify it. Later content adds new stuff such as inductors and capacitors, and then the end content which are digital logic and op-amps are the easiest to do. Transformers which are the very last topic is not in the exam this year.
Labs are pretty challenging depending on the week, but most of the time you just go in and try to do stuff and hope that it works. Midsems killed everyone without exception. Tutorial questions are usually (if not always) not a good indicator of question difficulty for exams, the discrepancy is too high. You do not get equation sheets for the exam, so be prepared to memorize equations.
Lecturers:
Had two lecturers, Vasillios (8/10) and Branislav (4/10). Vasillios is a pretty good lecturer, explains stuff well. Branislav is not quite branislife, drones on with a very dry and monotone voice which makes classes very, very boring and painful to go through.
Tutor: -/10
As soon as I learned that Branislav is my tutor, tutorials do not exist. It isn't compulsory to come, btw.
Overall: 5/10
Practice, practice, practice, and hope you do not get rekt. It may be futile, but one can dream.
MMAN2600 - Fluid Mechanics
Ease: 6.5/10
Doable with effort, I for one did not put enough effort and got screwed on the finals earlier today.
Content: 7/10
Some topics are pretty interesting. Computing parts are usually the best to do provided that it is the laboratory session, not the actual lecture. On a bigger scale the course revolves around the Bernoulli equation, the energy equation derived from Bernoulli and relating forces to again, Bernoulli. Besides that there are some other odds and ends such as linear and angular momentum, lift and drag forces, and so on.
There are 5 lab sessions, usually manageable with a good team and generally a race against time due to the amount of work you need to do, although it doesn't always happen.
Tutorials are not compulsory to attend, but it helps to go to get the type of questions on the exam which actually is quite similar to it.
There are two midsems, and provided that you studied (or crammed) pretty well the amount of topics covered per quiz should be manageable. The same problem in ELEC appears here; you do not get any equation sheets. What makes it hard here is that you usually also need to know values depending on what equation to use, although Tracie is pretty lenient on it, particularly on the final exam where if you know the working but just somehow forgotten that particular value you can explain that you forgot and use a placeholder or an estimate value for that. Not sure how that would be effective in gaining more marks in the exam, but at least you can try to squeeze some than not taking any marks.
The general 'homework'/study help system is called LearnSmart, basically a 40-MC/short answer question where you revise topics on the modules being taught. Easy 5% because you have infinite tries with no penalties, as long as you just finish the module.
Lecturers:
Had two lecturers, Shaun Chan (8/10) and Tracie Barber (7/10). Both are chill, I like Shaun more because he explains most of the topic and question examples in good depth. Tracie leans more on the theoretical side (has calculation parts too) so I don't find it too interesting, although she explains topics quite well also.
Tutor: -/10
Did not really bother to know, basically just a 'come-get answers-leave' session.
Overall: 7/10
The finals is pretty tricky, some questions just escaped me and some questions are just literally plug and play. Best thing to do is again, doing a variety of questions to get used to it.
