Conference Session

What's New in the Mechanics of Materials?

Collection

2007 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

Andrea Surovek, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Tagged Divisions

Mechanics

Mechanics of Materials course offered at the South Dakota School of Mines andTechnology (SDSM&T). The students chose the source of the problem, made assumptions onthe behavior of the drill based on observations and some online research, modeled the behavior,solved for the internal stress and angle of twist, and evaluated the design based on theirobservations and calculations. While textbook problems have improved in how they try tomodel realistic situations, they still present examples in which all of the variables have beenpredetermined and for which there is a unique solution. Typical homework problems do notdevelop student skills in unstructured problem solving, emphasized in ABET 20004 criteria.Student developed problems help the students