An essential for every engineer and most STEM jobs, this course provides an intuition and know-how for conceptualizing and describing forces within virtually any mechanical system as well as the mathematical equipment to define vectors and perform force analyses. This knowledge is a must for almost all engineering fields, and you might find some of it useful even in your daily life! It forms the bedrock for many more physics, engineering, and mathematics subjects. 

This FLEX course has no in-person meeting times. In addition to engagement through discussions with me and fellow students, recorded lectures will be posted each week, allowing you to learn at your own pace with other students! I will post a challenge activity every week for the students to collaborate on together, and help guide discussion toward a viable solution -- the activities can be tricky, but there's usually more than one way to complete them, so working together helps!

Additionally, at the beginning of each week, I will provide optional homework pages for students to complete either on their own or with others as they like. They can also submit them to me for feedback and review, and I will release an answer key at the following class.

Week 1: 
We'll start with the basics: what is the difference between vectors and scalars, what is meant by the terms static, dynamic, and equilibrium. Next we'll dive into forces, point analysis, and computing basic reaction forces. These might seem like simple topics, but they're essential for what's to come.

Week 2: 
Oblique vectors. Here's where things can get tricky, but we'll be using trigonometry to decompose vectors into manageable parts that we can easily manipulate in our calculations.

Week 3: 
Point analysis with oblique vectors. This is where the rubber hits the road, and we'll be leveraging trigonometry to untangle vectors into manageable sets of equations requiring only the most basic algebra.

Week 4: 
Moment and rigid beam analysis. Moment, better known as torque, is an excellent tool for calculating forces when they're not all headed toward the same point, which is much of the time. Teeter totters, cranes... if it uses leverage, it uses moments.

Week 5: 
Distributed forces. From footsteps to truck loads, most forces don't strike at a single point -- they're spread across an area. 

Week 6: 
The revolution in structure design -- truss analysis. We've all seen them on bridges, buildings, and even chassis and roll cages before. Now we can use all the tools we've learned to explore their advantages and how best to analyze them.