Education, Degrees, Automotive Maintenance

Is ohm’s law considered mathematics?

It is a mathematical equation which has a physics application.
I have used ohm’s law as an example to show that if E (voltage) is held constant, I (current) is inversely related to R (resistance).

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I think so.

It’s amazing where applied math…applies. My mom who had a degree in chemistry and had experience working as a wet chemist was having trouble getting a cake recipe to come out right when she baked that cake. It was a variation on a standard recipe with some special ingredients. No matter how she tweaked the recipe it wasn’t working.

Finally, in exasperation, she got out her old college chemistry books and spent some time converting the ingredients into a chemical formula. Aha, just as she expected, the formula didn’t balance! She played around with it until she found where and by how much she had to tweak the values to achieve proper chemical balance. Then she converted the formula back into recipe measures. And she had a successful cake.

Now that was applied math. :grin:

To toss a crumb toward keeping this car related, it always was nice to take a fresh baked homemade banana orange spice cake with us in the car as we drove the roads to a church picnic, to visit out of town family, or to share with friends. Driving Mama’s cake. :+1:

I’ll shut up now. :grin:

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There is a fine line between appearing to be hardworking and undecided. I’ve hired 100s of people for technical jobs and poured over thousands of resumes. People having multiple degrees related to the field of employment reflects well on hard work and dedication. When I see degrees in disparate areas, I start thinking they don’t really know what they want to do as a career. When I’m considering investing on the order of a million dollars in someone, I want to be relatively sure it won’t be wasted when they get bored and divert to some other interest. My advice is to be careful what you think helps your case, it may have the opposite effect. Take the courses that interest you, save the effort on degrees for your primary livelihood…

I picked up a textbook at a yard sale that was written for a trade school course in appliance repair. In the book was a section on solid state electronics. The chapter discussed semiconductors and how silicon was treated with boron or phosphorus to produce N type or P type semiconductors and then went into NPN or PNP type transistors. The textbook displayed a portion of the periodic table and discussed the outer orbit of electrons in these elements.
When we discussed how transistors are used to make the logic gates in a computer hardware class, I showed the students the text and suggested that if an appliance repairman was expected to have some knowledge of chemistry, certainly a computer science person should have some knowledge of chemistry. In other words, the fields of science don’t exist alone in a vacuum. I learned a lot of mathematics from its application in physics and chemistry classes I took.
I would assume a course in auto repair would draw on physics, chemistry, mathematics and even some computer knowledge.

ohm’s law comes into play during automotive diagnosis

That’s why I brought it up and asked my question

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I think of math as the language of science and engineering, inseparable.

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I think that Yoshi wanting this degree is an Ego trip . I can’t really see anyone being too impressed by it being on his resume .

@VOLVO-V70
Respectfully, I disagree that he is on an ego trip. As to his resume, I do agree that it is best to list only relevant qualifications to the job being applied for. Most folks have some skills and experience, even professional qualifications we don’t trot out on display in every situation.

From what he has stated it seems he is interested in learning about and understanding the details of automotive maintenance and repair beyond what can be gleaned from You Tube, but for his own personal use in maintaining his vehicles and, apparently, simply because he enjoys learning new things that spark his interest even if off on a tangent from his existing career field.

He came here asking for feedback on how best to acquire automotive training and just what type without it interfering with his current work which he intends to keep.

I may be in error but that’s what I’ve understood from his posts.

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Hi Volvo-v70:
I too need to respectfully disagree. Resume or not, the pursuit of learning something new because it interests you frequently leads to enrichening new life experiences and opportunities.

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Math is used to explain our observation of Science. Galileo invented Calculus to prove his observational model of how the 5 known planets at the time orbited the Sun. Later Mathematics was used to discover Neptune. Astronomers couldn’t see it, but based on mathematical calculations physicists determined that a planet must be in this location with this orbital path. And sure enough there was. Math is also how we discovered planets orbiting other stars. By observing the slight wobble of the sun that was being pulled by an orbiting planet.

Ohm’s law is physics, but you use Mathematics to apply it (calculate it).

Applied Mathematics is a discipline unto itself. I have a MS in Applied Mathematics toward Computer Science. Pure mathematics is abstract. Physics is is the application of mathematics.

And for years on the internet it’s been said that Einstein wasn’t good at math…that is completely false. He was a brilliant mathematician…one of the best in the world.

One of my visits to my daughter when she was an undergraduate at MIT…she introduced me to a friend of hers who was studying physics and applied mathematics. He showed me a carburetor he designed and built. MIT does a lot of research for the automotive industry. And he was only 15. He loved cars…had a great deal of knowledge about them.

I to disagree…I have a cousin who’s a mechanical engineer. At the age of 30 she decided to get a BS in Astronomy. Never wanted to pursue a career in Astronomy…it was just for fun. She owns a $40,000 telescope. Her and her two kids would spend hours in their back yard looking at the stars. She’s been doing this for over 40 years.

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I am with @MikeInNH on this one. Even though I suffer from Geezeritis, and though I still have all my marbles, they roll rather slowly, I still like learning new things. A couple of weeks ago, a friend called me and couldn’t start her Toyota Prius. She asked me to bring my jumper cables. I jumped the 12 volt battery with no luck. After the jumper cables had been on for a while and the Prius wouldn’t start, I measured the battery voltage and it was just 8.6 volts. She had just driven the Prius 25 miles into town. I thought that the battery should have recharged in 25 miles, so I told her to have the Prius towed to the dealer and take my van back to her home. It did turn out to be the battery, but I was not ready to advise throwing parts at the situation.
What was embarrassing to me was that I had no real understanding on how hybrids function. Hybrids have been around almost 30 years. I’ve driven hybrids, yet all I knew was there is a higher voltage battery that powers drive motors that also serve as generators when the car is coasting. I knew that there was a regular 12 volt battery, but I had no idea how it was recharged. I did not know how the internal combustion engine was started. After I got home, I immediately did some research and learned how the dc to dc converter works to recharge the 12 volt battery. I learned that the motor generator spins the internal combustion engine at 1000 rpm or so and this engine kicks in when needed. Now I don’t own a hybrid, but the 2021 Toyota Sienna will be offered only as a hybrid. If I have to replace my 2017 Sienna, and go for another Sienna, it will have to be a hybrid.
Twenty one years ago, my department chair was dying of cancer. At the time, he was teaching a graduate course in computer simulation. I was handed the textbook for the course and told “here is where he is in the course”. I was given the Visual Slam software. Every spare moment during the day for a week, I hid in a study carell in the library and poured over the book. I installed the software on my home computer and spent my evenings working with the software. I was also teaching other courses at the time.
It was a great opportunity to apply the statistical distributions that I had studied in my degree in research design and statistics. I had a difficult week, but I survived. Had I not taken over the class, the students might have lost the credit as nobody else in the department wanted to touch the course. I taught the class almost every year after that until I retired.
When I served as a research design consultant, I was told by my boss that I needed to learn about neural networks. I drove 90 miles each way for a week to attend a training session session put on by the military on neural networks. Several years before that, I was sent to a training session on computer networks. As a teacher when I expected my students to learn concepts and ideas new to them, I should be willing to do the same thing.
I admire your cousin as a successful mechanical engineer as an older student studying and earning a degree in astronomy.

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Jump starting a hybrid is easier than jump starting a conventional vehicle, there is no high amperage draw from a starter motor.

When the start button is pressed, the engine normally does not start, there is a “ready” message on the dash to indicate the hybrid system is on. After the ready light is displayed, disconnect the jumper box, close the hood, after the accelerator is pressed the engine will start.

We never push hybrid vehicles into the shop because of a dead 12 volt battery, they are always driven (hands-on experience can sometimes be valued greater than classroom time).

@Nevada_545. The ready light would never come on. My guess was that if the battery was defective, it might have a shorted cell and that it would never be able to supply enough power to get things going.
I want to learn more about hybrid cars and I appreciate your input.

Brookdale Community College automotive courses if you live in NJ. I took them and they are one of the best courses in the US. Many young people who graduate get jobs in dealerships.

I decided to enroll in a automotive technology program that is not specific to a certain manufacture. It’s a “Comprehensive Automotive Repairs and Services” degree at a local community college.

  1. Are there any type of autobody programs? What is the name of such a degree that would teach me autobody topics? Things like rust repair, ding/dent removal, painting, etc… It seems that all the local community colleges around me only offer programs that go over maintenance/service things that don’t go into autobody topics. There doesn’t appear to be a single college in my state that offers this type of program except for profit schools.

  2. There doesn’t appear to be any bachelor programs or anything further than an associates degree. Bachelor degrees or anything further than that are not common in automotive technology?

I have not seen any in our local colleges for body work, they have other classes in repair. My thought would be to go to body shops and see if they need a helper if body repair is your goal.

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Yep, I think body work is a hands-on learning process. I imagine getting a job at a shop would be the quickest teacher.

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Auto Body programs are a little harder to find here, there’s one that’s available to 20 or more local high schools that’s a half day program, students also earn credit for the technical college 30mi away if they wish to go for their 2yr degree.