I took this graduate level class on Adhesion Mechanics this quarter because I thought it'd help me get a better feel for what I'm going to be doing at Boeing and also cause adhesion is one of my favorite subjects and it counts towards a potential Master's Degree. I should have known it would be a rigorous course in mathematics given that it was a Mechanical Engineering course, as I have taken classes in this department before, including the grad-level Fracture Mechanics class.
Very quickly you can tell the difference between a Materials Science course and the equivilant Mechanical Engineering course. For instance, I took that Fracture class in ME at the same time I took a fracture-like course in MSE during my senior year of undergrad. Both classes covered the same topic, but in completely different ways. Prof. Ramulu is a essentially a Materials-like guy but he teaches it in a Mechanical Engr's perspective, aka, lots of math and number crunching. In the MSE course, it was based off the physical and chemical science of the fracture of materials. It's quite different, though taking both at the same time really helped me learn it better.
This time around, I am working adhesion in real life as an engineer/scientist, and taking adhesion in mathematical/computational form as a class. Not so sure it works as great in the education department... All I get out of it is a refresher course in proofs, deriviatives and touching up my excel skills.
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