Sources and evidence
Why the site is built the way it is.
Two kinds of decisions shape this site: how each lesson is taught, and what order the courses come in. Both are grounded in published work, not opinion. Every claim below links to its source so you can check it yourself.
How the teaching is designed
These are choices about how a single lesson is structured. Each one comes from learning science, not habit.
| What the lessons do | Why it helps you learn | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Show a full worked example before you solve on your own | Studying a complete solution first lowers the mental load and lets you see the pattern before you have to produce it. | IES Practice Guide: Organizing Instruction and Study to Improve Student Learning |
| End each lesson with closed-notes recall, and bring topics back later | Pulling an idea from memory, and spacing that practice over time, builds durable learning far better than rereading. | Education Endowment Foundation: cognitive science in the classroom review |
| Favor active practice over passive reading | Across 225 STEM studies, active learning raised exam scores by about half a standard deviation and cut failure rates by roughly a third. | Freeman et al., PNAS (2014): Active learning increases student performance in STEM |
| Connect every new idea to what you already know, and keep goals, practice, and feedback aligned | New understanding is built on prior knowledge. When objectives, practice, and feedback point the same way, learning sticks. | Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center: research-based learning principles |
Public beta: MechCompass is currently in public beta. The roadmap and platform structure are live, while detailed course modules are being developed progressively.
How the curriculum is ordered
The sequence of courses mirrors how accredited university mechanical engineering programs are built.
| How the path is organized | Why it is ordered this way | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Mathematics and physics come first, before the engineering core | They are the language every later course is written in, so gaps here make everything afterward harder than it needs to be. | MIT Mechanical Engineering (Course 2) degree chart |
| Statics is the gateway, then mechanics of materials and dynamics | Free-body diagrams and equilibrium are the prerequisites for understanding stress and motion. | MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering: Course 2 program |
| Thermodynamics, then fluid mechanics, then heat transfer | Each course adds one layer to the same picture of energy and flow, so they build naturally in sequence. | Stanford Mechanical Engineering (BS) program requirements |
| A shared core for everyone, then one specialization track | Strong programs teach common fundamentals first, then let you concentrate through electives and a track. | UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering degree program |
| The goals include design, experiments, ethics, and communication, not just analysis | An accredited engineering program is expected to develop these abilities, so the roadmap treats them as core, not extra. | ABET: Criteria for Accrediting Engineering Programs, student outcomes |
Textbooks and link policy
The roadmap is built to stand on its own, but each course also points you to the standard reference text for that subject, so you can go deeper when you want to. Open textbooks link to their official free pages. Commercial textbooks link to a bookstore search so you can find the latest legal edition. This site does not host or share copyrighted textbook files.
You can see the full reading list, and what each book is best for, on the textbooks page.
Next step
See the roadmap.
Use the evidence here to understand why the curriculum is ordered the way it is.