[Rayan]

Hello everybody,
I'm second year chemistry and we take a "differential equations" course and it is very hard considering the fact that i'm not so into maths.. i mean, will i ever need to know how to solve a differential equation in chemistry?!!!
do u ppl needed to know these things at any point of your lives? why are they teaching us these complecated stuff!

[xiankai]

well calculus... its not so hard once u get used to it

the only applications for it so far that i've learned is in half-life equations, but there are probably much and many more that i haven't learned yet.

since it involves the rate of change of a variable with another, i would suppose it would be very useful in calculating predicted trends between elements, solubilities,or basically anything that varies with another variable(temperature, pressure, etc.)

[Borek]

Whole kinetics, all diffusion controlled processes (e.g. in electrochemistry), gas and TL chromatography (mathematically similarly to the diffusion controlled processes), whole quantum chemistry and so on. In general all processes that are not in steady state but that are time dependent should be described by differential equations.

E.g. kinetics on its own is enough to force use of differential equations to describe many (if not all) biological systems.

[Rayan]

okay, i'm convinced, but still hate the course though!

[jdurg]

Diff-EQ?!!!!   Good god I hated that course.  <vomits in trash can beside computer>

[movies]

I was going to minor in math until I got to diff. eq.  The math wasn't too bad for me because I had done a lot of it in physics classes before, but the prof. was awful.  It was the last math class I ever took.  Maybe that explains why I was totally lost in p-chem.

[Rayan]

i really liked analysis and all those things about functions and derivations, last year i had a 96/100 in the math course, but this year.. that course doesnt make any sense to me, i really hate it! and what's even worse, is that it has the highest coefficient of all, even higher than all chemistry courses! may god help me pass the exam this monday  

[Rayan]

we also have electromagnetism, optics, thermodynamics, mechanics, electricity, statistics and analysis. the first year is common with the biology students, so we also take genetics, botany, ecology, zoology, embryology, reproduction, anatomy, cytology and hystology!
do u guys take all these things when u haven't even completed your second year?!!

[Donaldson Tan]

ryan: where do you study?

differential equations and matrices are inevitable when one must study the physical sciences. not only you need them for quantum chemistry and reaction kinetics, you need them to solve mass transfer problems (eg. chromatography) and solid state mechanics (eg. tensor matrices).

i can't avoid all these math, since i'm studying chemical engineering.

[Rayan]

I study in the Lebanese University. It's the only official university and it's for free of course, so it is known to be harder than any other university.

[GCT]

I'm actually taking differential equations at the moment.  My professor seems to think it is easier than integral calculus (which I aced, high A); "you can teach a monkey how to do it."  So far it doesn't seem to bad, although I admit I screwed up on the first test, didn't study for three of the sections (applications of differential equations, autonomous population growth, uniqueness) otherwise it was pretty easy.  If you need any help, I may be able to aid you.