Best online resource to help with Calculus III?

[trilerian]

A little back story here.  I think I made a horrible decision... I got into designing electronics a year and a half ago.  Lots of research, yada, yada.  I came to the conclusion that my knowledge was fundamentally lacking and figured school would be the best place to go.  So at almost 50 years old I decide to go back to school for my EE degree.  I got my associates a long time ago, lol and I got into IT right after getting it, so using calculus is not really part of my job.  Now, I got As in both calc I and II, but I am seriously suffering from CRS as it pertains to calculus and am having an awful time with calc III. 

I work a full time job, run a side business on top of that, and am taking 9 credit hours this semester.  My other 2 classes are engineering classes, and are going ok.  Ok, so I took my first exam last week and got a B-.  I started studying for this exam in week 1, and I found a way to study at least 20 hours a week for it, yet I still got a B-.  There is just too much stuff I am trying to cram into my head and I forget steps and just struggle trying to remember how to do something.  Not to mention I am awful at the quadric surfaces and such. 

So that is behind me, now I am getting into partial derivatives and double integrals, and well, I'm in over my head.  I want to quit every day.  If I can't pass calc III there is no point in going any farther since both calc III and IV are required for an EE degree.

School resources are difficult for me to use since I have a fulltime job, my instructor, well I can't understand her.  My hearing isn't what it used to be either (getting hearing aids in a couple of months, but everything moves slowly for those around here), but my instructor has an accent that I have difficulty with.  Now the TA who does recitation is great, but I only get 2 hours a week with him, so...   

Anyway, I'm looking for a really good online resource to help me with Calc III.  I have found some good Youtube instructors, The Organic Chemistry Tutor is one.  Khan Academy pops up on some stuff I search as well, and ChatGPT has been great.  I never actually used it before this class, lol.  But at least it gives me all the steps to a problem, and is mostly right...  I've been making do with this combination, but I am really hoping there is a better solution out there. 

[Smokey]

...
 I'm in over my head.  I want to quit every day. 
...

welcome to an engineering degree program   Great job getting at it! 

my 2c.  You want a real live human 1 on 1 tutor to target exactly what you are having issues with, not generic online stuff.  Go talk to the math department.  There will be someone (probably a grad student) willing to do some by the hour tutoring around your schedule.   

[5U4GB]

Another resource I could highly recommend is Silvanus Thompson's "Calculus Made Easy", which is a significant improvement over anything written since.  It's freely available online as text or an audiobook, although you really want the printed/written form for the diagrams and notation.  You can also get it for a few dollars from any source of secondhand books.

I'd also recommend getting one that hasn't been updated for current usage, it's kinda cool reading a text written by someone who was a contemporary of Lord Kelvin.

[coppercone2]

have you considered really small binoculars?

what would be interesting is if they made some realistic problems about something with electronics related to it. then it might be possible to pay attention and have learned something useful.

[10101]

These are the ones that i saw were some of the most helpful (besides the ones you said)

Written resource:

https://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/

Video resources:

https://www.youtube.com/@ProfessorLeonard/featured
http://www.ilectureonline.com/lectures/subject/MATH/22

Good luck 

[EPAIII]

Small binoculars?

I guess I'm dense. I don't get it. I'm not even sure which post it refers to.

If you want to see problems about electronics you will need to go to the EE department. And the ME department for mechanical engineering problems. Etc. The math guys are going to teach generic math and have their hands full at that.

have you considered really small binoculars?

what would be interesting is if they made some realistic problems about something with electronics related to it. then it might be possible to pay attention and have learned something useful.

[rstofer]

<removed link to Khan Academy>

It costs money but Calc Workshop is VERY good

https://calcworkshop.com/calculus-3/

Then there's MATLAB which does everything but eat (DEBE).  Free to students, cheap for personal license.

https://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/ref/integral2.html


Symbolab for solving:

https://www.symbolab.com/solver

Desmos for graphing (now integrated with symbolab)

https://www.desmos.com/

[SteveThackery]

My question: do any EEs here actually use Calc III to do their work?

[HuronKing]

My question: do any EEs here actually use Calc III to do their work?

I guess it depends on what type of work you end up doing - but I can tell you that I have.

One cannot understand Maxwell's Eqns without Calc III - they're all partial differential/integral vector equations.

And when I was on a path towards designing conical spiral and patch antennas for micro-satellites, I used HFSS from Ansys to simulate their performance for my supervisor. One would have no hope of understanding how to use the Fields Calculator in the software if one didn't have a foundational knowledge of calculus of vector fields. The Fields Calculator will do the math for you, but you have to know what equation and boundary conditions to feed it for analysis:


The EE who will spend their career calculating residential power consumption and affixing their PE stamp to a set of drawings for permitting purposes on a home probably/definitely has no daily need for Calc III... whereas the EE who wants to simulate the performance of an antenna absolutely needs to know Calc III just to use the software.

Besides, from a purely philosophical point of view its important to make EEs learn Calc 3 since its the calculus of 3-dimensional space and we live in a 3-dimensional world.

@The OP

First off, you deserve kudos for doing something INCREDIBLY difficult - trying to get an EE degree. It's not easy. I have sometimes taught students who were much like you (trying to get their degree well into their careers) and it's even harder than it is for students in their 20s for all the reasons you know.

Second, a lot of the resources that have been posted here I'd recommend as well. When I was a student I volunteered in the math department tutoring center (it got me on a list that went out to the school district so I could charge big money for private tutoring). Your school probably has a similar center.

Third, from a purely approach point of view, if you conquered Calc 1 and Calc 2, Calc 3 is just those but for 3-dimensional space. 

[BILLPOD]

Has it been determined how the small binoculars will help