Collection

2020 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Katherine Gascon; Steven Weinstein; Michael G. Antoniades

An Undergraduate Experiment to Introduce Surface Science FundamentalsKatherine Gascon, Steven J. Weinstein, Michael G. AntoniadesRochester Institute of TechnologyAbstractThe thermodynamic concepts relevant to surfactant adsorption, and their impact on surfacetension, are introduced in a laboratory experiment designed for undergraduate students. Using areliable and accessible method, students measure the surface tension of aqueous solutions atdifferent concentrations of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). Students collect data to estimate thecritical micelle concentration (CMC) and quantitatively determine the maximum surface excessusing the Gibbs adsorption equation. Students subsequently determine the surface area permolecule of this surfactant

Collection

2020 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Kyle Trenshaw; Emily Weber; Rachel Monfredo

.). Classroom activities rangefrom simple and quick team-building exercises (e.g., building towers or bridges from notecardsor newsprint, etc.) that provide a low-stakes window into engineering principles and informalopportunities for students to interact all the way to more formal laboratory exercises withassigned teams and peer evaluations. The course culminates in a final open-ended team designproject to investigate the iterative nature of engineering design through a solar heating challengein which students present the struggles they faced and their resulting solutions orally. Together,these assignments and activities aim to enhance the skillsets highlighted by Landis and Peuker asimportant for students’ ultimate success as engineers.CHE 150 has

Collection

2020 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Brian K Thorn; Daniel Tomaszewski; Andres Carrano

carbon dioxide [3].There has been limited work on the degradation of wood in landfills [4][5][6]. For the workconducted here, two characteristics of wood degradation in landfills are of major interest: thefraction of the carbon in wood that decomposes under landfill conditions, and the relativeamounts of CO2 and CH4 that are generated as wood decays anaerobically.Micales and Skog [7] report that 0% – 3% of the carbon from wood is released into theatmosphere as CO2 and CH4 once the material has been landfilled. Wang et al [4] observed thedecomposition of 4 wood species in laboratory scale landfills, and reported carbon conversionrates of 0.0%, .1%, 1.8%, and 7.8% for eucalyptus, radiata pine, spruce, and red oak,respectively. For this study we

Collection

2020 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Raymond Lam; Michael Orozco; Erick Mendieta; Bernard Hunter; Joseph Seiter

to Professor Hamid Namdar (department chair), Professor Stuart Asser (formerdepartment chair), and Mr. Jerry Sitbon (chief college laboratory technician) for their supports,encouragement, and guidance.6. References[1] B. Thompson, “How 3D Printing Will Impact The Manufacturing Industry,” Manufacturing Business Technology, Jan., 2016.[2] B. Jackson, “GE Aviation Celebration 30,000th 3D Printed Fuel Nozzle”, 3D Printing Industry, Oct. 2018.[3] N. Sankar, K. Natarayan, G. Iyer, A. Kalathil, “Printing the Future: From Prototype to Production,” Cognizant 20-20 Insights, pp. 1-8, Nov., 2015.[4] T. Letcher, M. Waytashek, “Material Property Testing of 3D-Printed Specimen in PLA on an Entry-Level 3D Printer,” ASME IMECE 2014 Proceedings

Collection

2020 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Stephen Boedo

, beam structural elements are often a critical design component,and it is not surprising that beam stresses and deflections are fundamental course topics inall undergraduate mechanical and civil engineering degree programs. In the MechanicalEngineering Department at RIT, students are introduced to beam bending and deflectionin a second-year strength of materials course (MECE 203). The approach is a traditionalone, starting with pure beam bending, followed with transverse loading leading to theconstruction of shear-moment diagrams. Torsion of beams of circular cross-section isalso covered. The discussion concludes with the derivation of beam deflection usingEuler-Bernoulli beam theory assuming uniform flexural rigidity. Laboratory

Collection

2020 St.Lawrence Section Meeting

Authors

Douglas Bohl

with a laboratory that was being conducted in the Mechanical andAeronautical Engineering lab class that utilized a magnetic stirring rod. This presented an easy,last minute subject for the flow visualization project that required very little preparation on thepart of the students who chose it. In general the images were of low to moderate quality in termsof the aesthetics, and the seriousness of the reflections followed this general trend. Anothercommon theme for the flow visualization images was, unsurprisingly, coffee. The two samplesof this topic in Figure 1 show the range in image quality. The image of the coffee pot was poorlycomposed and the flow was difficult to observe from the image. In contrast, the image of thecoffee cup with the