Conference Session

Lessons Learned From Design Projects

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter Avitabile; Jeffrey Hodgkins

Session 3659 NUMERICAL EVALUATION OF DISPLACEMENT AND ACCELERATION FOR A MASS, SPRING, DASHPOT SYSTEM Dr. Peter Avitabile, Assistant Professor Jeff Hodgkins, Graduate Student Mechanical Engineering Department University of Massachusetts Lowell One University Avenue Lowell, Massachusetts USA Peter_Avitabile@uml.eduAbstractA laboratory project requires measurements

Conference Session

BME Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Daniel Walsh

mission is to educate our students for careers of service, leadership anddistinction in biomedical engineering or other fields by using a participatory, learn by doing,“hands-on” laboratory, project and design centered approach.The program will accomplish this goal by building on the historic strengths of the college at thebachelors level and the individual strengths of participating faculty. The application ofengineering to medicine and biology underpins a strong and growing segment of the industrialsector, is the basis for a number of federal conversion efforts and continues to be an area ofinherent interest to students. The need for well educated professionals in this interdisciplinaryarea has become more acute as the technology being applied

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Austin Cheney; Heather Brown

(CIM) program at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) and therecent graduating seniors expressed a need for high level training of laboratory qualitycontrol and technical research. The skills necessary for graduates to become labmanagers, research consultants, or graduate students were touched upon in sophomorefundamentals lab but long forgotten by graduation. Actions were taken within thecurriculum that can serve as a model for other institutions to follow when consideringactive undergraduate research programs and the benefits therein.Steps taken in the curriculum included development of a Senior Concrete Laboratorywhich included 1) industry collaboration 2) multidisciplinary collaboration 3) technicalwriting and presentations and 4

Conference Session

Educational Research Initiatives at NSF

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Nicole DeJong Okamoto

Session 2675 Getting Started with an Adaptation and Implementation Grant Nicole DeJong Okamoto San Jose State UniversityIntroductionThe goal of the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program at theNational Science Foundation is to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, andmathematics (STEM) education for all students. The activities funded seek to improve studentlearning environments, course content, curricula, and educational practices.1 The program hasfour tracks. “Adaptation and Implementation” projects adapt and implement

Conference Session

Computer-Based Measurements

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Raymond Tavares; Anthony Duva; Mansour Zenouzi

thereasons for the recent major overhaul of the Thermodynamics Laboratory at Wentworth Instituteof Technology (WIT). Old equipment and experiments have been replaced with new apparatusthat are equipped with automated data acquisition systems.State-of-the-art computerized data acquisition systems enhance the quality of education byremoving the need for tedious, repetitive data recording, thus keeping the students’ attentionfocused on fundamental concepts. Furthermore, an industry standard graphical software packageLabView, from National Instruments is used to provide an increased students’ exposure toindustry data acquisition practices. This software provides tools for instrument control, dataacquisition, and data analysis. The data collection is

Conference Session

Emerging Trends in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

William Eichinger; Mark Wilson; Anton Kruger; Marian Muste; Tao Xing

forenhancing the overall learning experience as well as expanded educational opportunities for alarger pool of students have been enabled by the Internet. One such example is a remotely-accessed instructional laboratory experiment. Initial remote access development has been in thefields of computer science and electrical engineering where the Internet and related infrastructureare part of the curricula. Currently, these advancements are being adapted into engineeringprograms where a “hands-on” laboratory approach is essential.This paper presents a "proof-of-concept" remote-controlled experiment developed at IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering (formerly the Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research) to illustrate aconcept for an introductory undergraduate

Conference Session

Design Throughout the ChE Curriculum

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Timokleia Togkalidou; Rudiyanto Gunawan; Mitsuko Fujiwara; Jr., J. Carl Pirkle; Eric Hukkanen; Richard Braatz

Session # 1413 A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO CHEMICAL PROCESS DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT Richard D. Braatz, Mitsuko Fujiwara, Eric J. Hukkanen, J. Carl Pirkle, Jr., Timokleia Togkalidou, and Rudiyanto Gunawan Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering University of Illinois, 600 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801 braatz@uiuc.eduAbstractThis paper describes a combined lecture-discussion-laboratory course for teaching students asystematic approach to process design and development. This course intends to providestudents with a

Conference Session

Web Education II: Hardware/Examples

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Carl Steidley; Rafic Bachnak

Session 3120 Software and Hardware for Web-based Education Carl Steidley and Rafic Bachnak Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences Texas A&M University-Corpus ChristiAbstractInstitutions of higher education are actively seeking new methods to complement theirscience and engineering distance education programs with online experimentation. Thispaper describes the design and development of a virtual laboratory environment thatallows students to perform laboratory experiments from remote locations through a webbrowser. A front panel in LabVIEW displays the results and allows

Conference Session

Lab Experiments in Materials Science

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Amy Hsiao

Session 3264 Using Everyday Materials to Examine Characteristic Mechanical Properties of Metals, Polymers, and Ceramics Amy C. Hsiao Union CollegeIntroductionThis paper will describe an active laboratory exercise designed to introduce key mechanicalproperties of metals, polymers, and ceramics. The materials investigated are common andeveryday in the sense that they can be found in the desk, classroom, or refrigerator of a student,i.e., in his or her life. The exercise is presented as a “real-world” project, in which the studentsare newly

Conference Session

Unique Courses & Services for Freshmen

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Audeen Fentiman; John Demel; Richard Freuler

engineering up front and incorporating the hands-on laboratory experiences was intendedto attack the problems of poor retention by getting students involved and excited aboutengineering right from the beginning of their first term. An important element here was (and is)the use of regular faculty from across the departments of the College in the first- year courses toprovide significantly more interaction between first- year student and engineering faculty, whichestablishes a sense of identity with or belonging to engineering. It provided and continues tooffer the additional benefits of advancing toward the goals of increasing diversity, developing adynamic curriculum able to respond and adapt to the changing needs of the engineeringworkforce, and

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Computer Engineering Technology

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Ming-Sung Koh; Mick Brzoska; William Loendorf

underrepresented students with the potential to be replicated in other technology and engineering programs at other institutions. • The design of a curriculum that bridges software and hardware technologies including: team-based projects, experience-based learning and extensive laboratory hands-on experience. • The formation of an SET Program Advisory Board comprised of actively involved individuals with diverse backgrounds in the development and maintenance of software intensive systems from industry and government. • The development of an SET program Assessment Plan to meet the Technology Accreditation Commission of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (TAC of ABET) criteria

Conference Session

Rethinking Collection Development

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Karen Clay

. Example of a record in the Refworks databaseWe identified 66 research centers affiliated with the Stanford School of Engineering, anddata has been collected for 23 of these. The Refworks database contains 2052 records,each representing a document produced by a Lab or Center. Table 1 lists the Centerswhich have some content in the database and shows how many records were input foreach Center. Many have very few records, while for others, notably the KnowledgeSystems Laboratory, the Center for Turbulence Research and the Center for IntegratedFacility Engineering, we created hundreds of records. Page 9.1139.2 “Proceedings of the 2004 American Society

Conference Session

Collaborative & New Efforts in Engineering Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Bahman Motlagh; Walter Buchanan; Alireza Rahrooh

today’s technology, utilizing and integratingcomputers within the control loop is essential. An innovative feedback control laboratory has been developed in the department ofengineering technology at University of Central Florida to fill this need. The laboratory isequipped with some of the most frequently used control systems in engineering and industry. It isdesigned to bridge the gap between theory and real-life problems, and to give the studentsvaluable hands-on experience to help them better prepared for their careers. A number ofpractical feedback control system experiments are being developed that will allow students anopportunity to develop appropriate transfer functions and control programs for closed-loopsystem with a computer in

Conference Session

How We Teach Problem Solving?

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Rich Shiavi; Christopher Rowe

,focusing on computer modeling and simulation techniques for solving engineering and mathproblems. Since technology was just becoming user-friendly, MATLAB was a good choicebecause of its uncommon combination of ease of use and breadth of functionality.MATLAB originated in the late 1970's when Cleve Moler wanted to provide interactive accessto the FORTRAN linear algebra software packages EISPACK and LINPACK, motivated by hisbelief that a person should not have to learn FORTRAN in order to learn numerical computation.MATLAB was initially focused on constructing and manipulating matrices, and applyingalgorithms for eigenanalysis and linear algebra (“MATLAB” stands for “matrix laboratory”,reflecting these origins). In 1984, Cleve Moler and Jack Little

Conference Session

Mobile Robotics in Education

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

William Dillard

Session: 1420 Revisiting the Autonomous Robot: Finding the Engineer within the Student William Dillard 200 Broun Hall ECE Department Auburn University, AL 36849 Voice: (334) 844-1840 Fax: (334) 844-1809 dillard@eng.auburn.eduMotivation and Goals In 1999, the ECE department at Auburn University implemented a major curriculumreorganization that created four self-contained laboratories, two at

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Elizabeth A. Stephan; Amy G. Yuhasz; Matthew Ohland

Session 1526 The Benefit of Using Real-Time Sensors in the Engineering Classroom: Design of an Educational Experiment Amy G. Yuhasz, Matthew W. Ohland, Elizabeth A. Stephan General Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634AbstractClemson’s NSF-sponsored EXPerimental Engineering in Real-Time (EXPERT) project isinvestigating the effect of using real-time sensors on student learning of graphical representationsof various physical concepts and auxiliary benefit in understanding the concept itself. Thedevelopment of parallel laboratory activities (designed with and without the use of real

Conference Session

TIME 1: Controls

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

William Carnell; John Lumkes; Joseph Musto

. [1]. The course has been developed using Matlab as the primary programming platform. A low-cost USB interface device is used to connect mechatronic hardware to student laptop computers. Experiments including LEDs, temperature sensors, distance transducers, light sensors, solar cells, DC motors, and stepper motors, as well positioning tables and servo-controlled robots, have been developed. The course culminates in a creative design project, in which teams of students combine the various types of hardware used in the laboratory into a new application of their choosing. Based on both student and instructor feedback, the initial implementation of the course has been overwhelmingly positive.I. IntroductionIn the fall of 1999, Milwaukee School of

Conference Session

Technological Literacy II

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Charles Nippert

session 1761 What is Design and How Do We Let Non-Engineers in on the Secret That it’s Fun? Charles Nippert, Antonia D’Onofrio, Stephen Madigosky, Akshay Vilivalam Widener UniversityAbstractEngineering design is often one of the more interesting and exciting aspects ofengineering. Yet few outside the profession ever experience its challenges. At WidenerUniversity, an education course is offered to in service high school teachers that providesthem with an opportunity to develop a Virtual Laboratory designed around standardscience experiments. Programming was performed by one of the authors, while

Conference Session

Best Zone Papers

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Margaret Pinnell; Leon Chuck

ofthe service-learning activity has been in the engineering disciplines. 1, 4 This is very unfortunatesince many of the problems that exist in the world require engineering intervention. During the fall semester of 2002, the Introduction to Materials Laboratory Class from theMechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of Dayton was involvedwith a service learning project through ETHOS (Engineers in Technical HumanitarianOpportunities of Service-Learning). This project supported the work of the service organization,Aprovecho. The overall technical objective of the project was to improve the efficiency of awood burning cook stove or “eco-stoves” by proper selection of the insulative brick materialsused to make the

Conference Session

Curriculum Development in Electrical ET

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Chandra Sekhar; Jai Agrawal; Omer Farook

, pulse driver circuits, modern high-speed digital integrated circuit technologies, memorycircuits, analog and digital switches, multiplexers, power up/down sequencing, hot-swap circuits,clock generator and recovery circuits, data processing and recovery circuits, various signalingstandards, analog to digital conversion and an introduction to signal integrity, EMI, shielding,grounding and layout issues in printed circuit boards, integrated circuits and packages.III. ECET 154 - Analog ElectronicsThis is a course with 3 lecture hours, 3 laboratory hours and 4 credits.Prerequisite: ECET 100-level course in dc circuits or the consent of the instructorPrerequisite or Co-requisite: ECET 100-level course in

Conference Session

Trends in Energy Conversion/Conservation

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Camille George

. Thomas (UST) where students were challenged to acquire new information, tocollect data, analyze it and express an educated opinion. The pedagogy of the class wasdiscovery-oriented. The approach was in stark opposition to the established lecture, textbook,homework and exam tradition. Students initiated their own learning, an experience that cannotbe overemphasized for future problem solvers. Assignments included student-led lectures anddiscussions, a formal laboratory notebook, and a final thought experiment written in the form ofa proposal. Students’ experimental proposals, lecture topics, and lab experiments will bepresented in this paper.IntroductionEngineering education must create innovators. How does one gather new information, assembleit

Conference Session

NSF Grantees Poster Session

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

David Hata

A Low-Cost Approach to Teaching Transmission Line Fundamentals and Impedance Matching David M. Hata Portland Community CollegeAbstract:As part of a NSF-funded Project, Portland Community College has developed a series of low-cost experiments to teach transmission line fundamentals and impedance matching techniques.Using a MFJ-259B SWR Analyzer, experimental exercises to measure reflections coefficients,standing wave ratios, and input impedance have been developed and used in the teachinglaboratory. With the addition of a matching unit and simulated load, impedance matchingexercises can also be implemented. These laboratory exercises

Conference Session

Student Teams & Active Learning

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Chris Daubert; Steven Peretti; Paula Berardinelli; Deanna Dannels; Chris Anson; Lisa Bullard

Session 2131 Assessment of Teaming, Writing, and Speaking Instruction in Chemical Engineering Courses Steven W. Peretti, Paula Berardinelli, Lisa Bullard, Deanna P. Dannels, Dave Kmiec , Chris M. Anson, Chris Daubert North Carolina State UniversityA multidisciplinary faculty team at North Carolina State University has been iterativelydesigning and implementing teaming, writing, and speaking instructional modules to beimplemented within a junior-level chemical engineering laboratory course and a senior levelcapstone design course. The laboratory course is the

Conference Session

Virtual and Distance Experimentation

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Mazen Manasseh; Kevin Amaratunga; Eduardo Kausel

Session 2426 A Web-accessible Shaking Table Experiment for the Remote Monitoring of Seismic Effects in Structures Mazen Manasseh, Eduardo Kausel, Kevin Amaratunga Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Abstract A remotely accessible system for controlling shake table laboratory experiments is presented. The Shake Table WebLab at MIT s Civil Engineering Department is implemented under the iLab initiative for the development of educationally oriented remote experiments. The fully functional system allows

Conference Session

Lessons Learned From Design Projects

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter Avitabile; Charles Goodman; Tracy Van Zandt

@uml.eduAbstractDesigning a measurement system for a specific application can be a daunting task. A 2nd ordermechanical system (cantilever beam) is presented to the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory IIstudent groups. They are to measure the dynamic response at three non-colocated measurementpoints. The students are required to select three different types of measurement devices (fromseveral possible transducers), determine suitable locations, digital data acquisition requirements,etc. to determine the "best" method to address the problem. All measurements must becompared to each other. This requires spatial adjustment as well as integration/differentiation ofdisplacement, velocity and acceleration measurements; these may be acquired from an LVDT,accelerometer

Conference Session

TIME 8: Materials, MEMS, and Nano

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Mohammad Elahinia

Session 3566 Teaching Smart Materials to Engineering Undergraduate Students: A Problem Solving Approach Mohammad H. Elahinia Mechanical Engineering Department Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061Summary and IntroductionThis paper describes a problem solving approach for teaching the subject of smartmaterials to Mechanical Engineering undergraduate students. An experiment with aShape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuated robotic arm is designed for the seniorundergraduate laboratory (ME4006) in the

Conference Session

Topics in Mechanical ET

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Nancy Denton; Heather Cooper

diagnosticscourse was developed to prepare engineering technology students for the sophisticated testingand analysis technology of the maintenance field. The conceptual content of the course has beenrelatively constant; however, the laboratory activities have evolved significantly to adoptadditional technologies and software. This paper will review the original course design andcompare it to recent course offerings, with emphasis on the ongoing effort to incorporatemonitoring of a variety of operating parameters and to engage with industry.BackgroundThrough advances in solid-state electronics, instrumentation, and computing capabilities in the1970s and 1980s, the field of machinery condition monitoring obtained the technology needed tomake predictive

Conference Session

Forum for Nontraditional Engineering Programs

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Mikaya Lumori; Ernest Kim

Session 1732 A Review of Two Appr oaches to Teaching Applied Electr omagnetics Mikaya L.D. Lumor i and Er nest M. Kim Univer sity of San DiegoIntr oductionTwo different approaches to teaching the mandatory engineering electromagnetics courseare reviewed. Using basic theories developed in the course, divergent applications wereemphasized in different semesters of the course offering. The two separate applicationscovered were (a) radio frequency circuit design and (b) radar and antenna design. Thegeneral electromagnetic theory lectures were enhanced through laboratory experiences inthe two different

Conference Session

Course Development and Services

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

Gregory Mokodean; Xiannong Meng; Maurice Aburdene

courses hoping to gain first-hand knowledge of how the Internet works, how the webworks, how to set up an operational network and how to program the network to deliver variousapplications. In this paper, we summarize characteristics of computer network courses from theweb sites of 27 universities and colleges, mainly from the U.S. and from two other countries.We wanted to cover a variety of schools with different structures and objectives, including bothpublic and private, predominately undergraduate and graduate, and different regions of the US,from what was available on the web. We examined how the course is taught, what textbooks areused, which subjects and practices are covered in laboratory exercises, if any, and the topics ofcourse

Conference Session

Creative Ways to Present Basic Materials

Collection

2004 Annual Conference

Authors

M.L. Meier

entertainingsoftware such as programming languages, databases, and spreadsheets, even when it can reallyhelp them in their studies. In the case of spreadsheets, few students in our department had everused them in their engineering courses. This seemed surprising since spreadsheets are so easy touse, are ideal for performing routine calculations and plotting data, and a spreadsheet applicationhas probably been on every personal computer they have ever used. Normally this would notcause any concern except that many of our students continued to do much of their work usinghandheld calculators and pencils and were still drawing their graphs by hand, while at the sametime they’d never consider writing the text of their papers and laboratory reports without using