Feeling crappy...

MIPEkidD-3,
I can't say I understood E&M or Optics well on the 1st pass. However, I later did research in Optics and taught Physics in college, and nothing like having to explain things to others to force an understanding. E&M has a fascinating history where each piece was discovered incrementally, once while lecturing in front of a class. Maxwell tied it all together in a small set of equations that predicted the speed of light, at a time before homes had electricity. Thermo developed over the same time, but towards practical applications of refrigeration and engines. In engineering, E&M stops at Physics except for EE's who go deeper into fields and waves. Thermo has always been more in engineering. You just skim it in Physics and Chemistry classes. It gets deeper in later engineering classes (run into Maxwell again), with heat transfer and fluids extending it. You have to know all of the above to understand automobiles, plus EE and software for modern engine controls. The guys who drag race know many things not in the textbooks, most learned empirically (trial and error), with lots of the later from bright ideas that didn't work.