Ethics

It's been a while since I've posted a FE review lesson, so today I thought I would cover a topic that is often overlooked in my opinion: ethics. This is a section that is definitely worth studying because there are a surprisingly large amount of questions on the topic and if you "get it" you can slam dunk this portion of the test for easy points. I really struggled with the math and other sections of the morning session before I got to the ethics part, and when I got through these it really kind of picked up my morale because I was prepared for them and able to answer them well.

Make sure you study this section. I know, the temptation is there to just skip it because we're all good people and know right from wrong, right? But don't skip this! Make sure you study it a bit, because it's a significant part of the exam, it's relatively painless to study, and if you blow this section you will hate yourself for throwing away easy points just because you never thought of something a certain way.

There is a portion of the Supplied-Reference Handbook that covers this section. My review professor suggested simply reading this the night before the exam. I would suggest reading it once now, and then reading it again the night before the exam, to take advantage of delayed-review learning which helps your brain retain info. Either way, though, it's a good thing to review the night before as a break from the calculations and heavy mental lifting.

Post-Exam Thoughts

As some of you may know, I began this blog before having taken the FE exam. Blogging practice problems was part of my study routine to actually prepare myself (as well as you). Well, a few weeks back I sat down and took the thing, and I think I have some insight to offer having actually completed it.

Of course, I don't have my results back but I feel pretty good about it. Good enough that I'm not going to be wrought with anxiety for the next 10 weeks while I wait for them to finally release my score, but not confident enough that I will be totally heartbroken if I did not pass. But overall I think my study strategy and test-taking strategies worked out well; if I didn't pass I'm sure it's because I didn't practice them more rigorously (I flaked out on studying a bit in the couple weeks prior), rather than my approach being fundamentally wrong.

Anyway, while the exam is still fresh in my mind, I'd like to offer some general thoughts to future exam candidates:

• Don't get too hung up on the sections in the Supplied Reference Manual. There are morning-session questions where the discipline-specific (especially electrical and civil) sections are useful. Likewise, if you take a discipline-specific afternoon exam, that doesn't mean all the info you need will be in your discipline's section. For example, I took the Civil exam but went back into some of the morning topics, the Environmental section, and even the Mechanical section.
• The index in the Supplied Reference Manual sucks. I'd guess it has about 10% of the subject matter referenced. It's worth a look but don't waste a lot of time digging through it.
• I wouldn't even risk bringing a cell phone with you. For all the other rules -- no hats, no water bottles on the table, etc. -- the monitors seemed willing to give you a reminder and ask you to comply. But they seemed pretty adamant that if a phone were seen or heard, you were out. I even took the battery out of my car alarm keychain because I'd rather have someone pull a hit-and-run on me than get bounced from the exam.
• You can take bathroom breaks during the exam. There's a "procedure", which they will explain. But there's no need to take a bunch of Immodium the night before or something. I just thought this was useful info since I hadn't seen it written anywhere and was a little curious about it affecting my performance.
• I had plenty of time to reason through more than half of the problems on both the morning and afternoon sessions -- probably closer to 75% if you count things I had to "re-learn" on the spot using the reference manual. Of course, if I'd studied more, maybe I would have been able to reason through more. But I like my odds.
• As I was taking it, I reasoned that if I was absolutely sure on at least 40 questions in the morning and 20 questions in the afternoon, I had a good chance of passing even if I had to guess on every remaining problem. 
• It seemed like there were more "trivia" questions than I expected -- conceptual knowledge, rather than calculations -- especially on the Civil afternoon. They were seemingly too random to pick a few topics to suggest reviewing, but if you have any vocabulary flash cards left over from your classes it would be worth going through.
• The ethics session was awesome. I carefully read that portion of the Supplied Reference Manual as I laid in bed the night before the exam. I'm glad I did because most of them were just straight out of the book. There was only one that wasn't completely cut-and-dry. I am sure that section really buoyed my score.
• If you can't find a needed formula or a vocabulary definition in the book right away, move on. I was surprised how many questions -- even ones I had absolutely no idea about -- I ended up answering confidently just by stumbling upon what I needed by dumb luck while searching for something else.

Well, that's about all I've got. I'm sure I'll post some more video lessons coming up to the next FE session in the fall. And I'll let you know if I passed!

Modelling resistors in parallel and series

Here is a topic that will help you answer some of the questions on the electrical portion of the morning FE exam session, and potentially some afternoon questions if you're an EE. It's also a concept you'll use all semester long if you're in a course in electric circuit analysis. This lesson covers how to find the equivalent resistance of a group of resistors in parallel and series.

When you have a circuit that contains multiple resistors, it typically makes it easier to analyze the circuit if you can reduce the diagram down to a simplified model. One way of doing this is to find an equivalent resistance of the resistors in question, which would allow you to model them as fewer (ideally one) resistors.

Simple Partial Derivatives

Here's a quick lesson on a calculus topic you'll likely see on the Fundamentals of Engineering exam: partial derivatives. You might also see this in Calculus III if you are still completing that coursework. Anyway, if you are pretty good at taking regular everyday derivatives and/or know where to locate the table of derivatives in your Supplied-Reference Handbook, partial derivatives are very easy. Check it out:

Partial derivatives are indicated by the "curly D" notation (as I call it). Where standard derivatives are written with regular-font d's, such as "dy/dx", partial derivatives use curvy scripted d's.

Vector Cross Product

This lesson will give you some help on finding the cross product of a pair of three-dimensional vectors. This is something which I saw in one of the courses of the three-semester General Physics series, and also again in Calculus III. In the remainder of my degree work I haven't used it much, so it's easy to get rusty on. However, I anticipate that you'll see at least one question on the Fundamentals of Engineering exam which asks for the cross product and potentially another that uses it, and it's a fairly quick and easy question to answer...if you remember how! So watch this video and then do a couple practice problems to brush up before your exam.

As you might notice if you've watched the previous video (and I mention it) the cross product is basically the determinant of a 3x3 matrix, except the top row is the <i, j, k> "vector" and the second and third rows are the coefficients of A and B respectively. So if you can do a 3x3 matrix determinant problem, you can do this.

Stopping Sight Distance

Here's a lesson that will help you on the afternoon session if you plan on taking the civil-specific test. I don't think there are enough discipline-specific afternoon study materials out there on the web for free, so I'm going to make some, starting with Stopping Sight Distance (SSD).

You don't need to know this to pass the exam, but to refresh your memory, SSD is basically the length of roadway it will take a vehicle operating at certain design parameters and assumptions to stop before it hits an object in the middle of the road. It all boils down to time multiplied by velocity to get a distance, but there are two time components. First, how long does it take the driver to react to this object he's about to crash into? Second, how much time does it take the vehicle to come to a complete stop?

FE Supplied Reference Handbook download

Did you know that NCEES will allow you to download a free copy of their FE Supplied Reference Handbook?

I recommend dropping the approximately $15 for a hard copy, so you can get used to flipping around. But if you need to save your pennies for a bit or like the convenience of an e-book, check out this website:

http://ncees.org/exams/study-materials/download-fe-supplied-reference-handbook/

You have to put in an e-mail address and they will send you  password instantly. Check it out!