When I originally signed up to take C&M BioCalc for my freshman calculus course, my older brother tried to talk me out of it. He told me that I wouldn't learn anything, and that I would have trouble later on in my engineering classes. Out of stubbornness, I stuck with it. This past year, my brother came to me to ask my help. One of his mechanical engineering classes was filled with Calculus III material and he was having trouble. After I helped him, he said to me, "I wish I had taken a C&M course. I probably still would have forgotten all of the formulas, but at least I would know how to go about getting the answer."
I am currently a 2nd year Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota in Geology and want to report the advantages that C&M DiffEq has given me. It turns out that describing the mathematics of deformation in rocks is simply the flow section of C&M Diffeq expanded to 3-D. If you can find the strain matrix of the rocks (matrix of the diffeq in C&M), you can get flow paths and watch how the rock deforms. Another one of my advisor's students had been working on this before I came and has developed the theory behind relating these flow paths to rock deformation. It was considered quite neat that I had actually learned how to do this as an undergrad in C&M. I am using the C&M DiffEq lessons to teach new geology grad students the mathematics behind our work.
Techs support both the lab machines and the software used in this program.
In the event of a problem, send an e-mail to tech@cm.math.uiuc.edu.