My third time taking thermodynamics I think I finally got it.
It was honestly just finally throwing up my hands and asking the professor directly, "what is the motivation for all these partial differential equations".
They said, "because it lets us calculate values we want to know from things we can easily measure."
Literally the entire field clicked at that point. Third time taking the course. Sure, I got fine grades the first two times, but since they were all split thermo and stat mech I think I made up a lot of it with stat mech since that came more naturally than PDEs.
It was honestly just finally throwing up my hands and asking the professor directly, "what is the motivation for all these partial differential equations".
They said, "because it lets us calculate values we want to know from things we can easily measure."
Literally the entire field clicked at that point. Third time taking the course. Sure, I got fine grades the first two times, but since they were all split thermo and stat mech I think I made up a lot of it with stat mech since that came more naturally than PDEs.