How long has it been since you really thought about your engineering roots? By that I mean basic math and physics.
Recently, I thought about it a lot. This past fall I enrolled in a computational physics class in Optics. It was a real eye-opener, especially the math part – calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, etc. Although I enjoyed the challenge of the physics, I struggled for several weeks with the math – trying to recall principles after (quite) a few years removed from the classroom. I caught on, though, and eventually caught up with the rest of the class.
While maybe not totally applicable to hard physics, the following video illustrates some basic physics principles with regard to shatter and fracture: