Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Aldaco

program –a program that operates for the public good with a public mandate in mind, with strong privatesector support, and across all of the educational segments. The campaign attracted many whosought to be educated about our efforts -- elected officials, representatives from newspapers,radio and television, and even industry. As an ironic result, the number of supporters of theprogram among the ranks of industry representatives, reporters and politicians is at an all timehigh.Despite the political upheaval and the challenges that face us, the author believes that the MESAeffort, including the MESA Engineering Program or MEP, can and will flourish. There is nodoubt that the proposition presents some very real constraints, but we must recall that

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

William E. Cole

plantproblems with the operating personnel and he had a specific objective in mind for the visit.Operating data spanning a one year period was obtained from plant personnel. This dataincluded hourly readings of the turbine operating conditions over two thousand hours ofoperation. From this database, approximately eight hundred data points were used to train thenetwork.Students need to make several decisions in creating the model. The first of these is whatparameters to use as input parameters and which to model as output parameters. For each ofthese data points, the turbine inlet temperature, air temperature, air pressure, steam injection rate,time since cleaning, power output, and heat rate were entered into the database created in Excel.Two separate

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Amer Mokaddem; James Moller

thatMohr’s circle could be taught as the principal or only means for stress transformation. Perhapsthere is a balance which could be struck between these two extremes which is particularlybeneficial to the student. It is important to keep in mind how the learning styles of students havechanged over the past decade as the personal computer has become common in all facets of dailylife and as user interfaces have become increasingly image-based. Students are very comfortablewith associating objects on the screen at disparate locations with an implicit process by whichthey are associated (e.g., an equation). They are also comfortable with associating entities otherthan words (e.g., colors, symbols, font style) with information.There are opportunities

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

R. E. Rowlands

Session 1668 Some Tutorial Software for Teaching Composites R. E. Rowlands Department of Mechanical Engineering University of Wisconsin-MadisonABSTRACTThe amount of "number-crunching" associated with the mechanics of composite materialsrenders it difficult to assign "what-if", "trial and error" or "design-type" homework or projectswithout computational assistance. Several tutorial-type software programs have been developedtherefore and are demonstrated here. Graphics are used generously, including some animation.1. INTRODUCTIONSome of the

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Marshall R. Boggio

create "mind" images for viewers facilitate understanding of equations and data results be adaptable to a wide audience (fifth grade through college sophomore) To perform the above will require: a programming structure to be on-line linkable, in a short period ( 30 minutes), to match the current audience. capturing of real world visuals (still andmotion) in creative ways. a means for the viewer to play "what if"situations with the experimental apparatus. accompanying music and narrative compatible with the topic being presented. ability to overlay text, photos, video, animation on monitor

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael D. Amos; Bruce E. Segee

considerations. After programming the entire network, the programmer is still left with aprogram that is probably text based, difficult to modify, and cumbersome for the averagecomputer user with no programming experience to use.The next section will describe how this project works as well as the advantages anddisadvantages of using such a system.3. Neural Networks Using Excel3.1 ObjectivesThere were several objectives in mind when designing the interface for this software package.The first and most important was to make it easy to use. The goal was to make it easy enough sothat someone with little or no programming experience could sit down, read the instructions, andwithin 10 minutes have a working Neural Network. The intended audience was the

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard Parker; Walter Buchanan

is correct to boot.No matter how intuitive software products become, we have to teach the basic concepts thatunderlie the discipline. We do not want to have our students become “symbol pushers” any morethan we what them to be merely “button pushers.” We want them to understand thefundamentals and we want them to be able to apply those fundamental concepts in a variety ofcomplex situations. The place of Electronics Testbench in this scenario is to be the study guide.The whole course is structured in the form of a practice quiz. The beauty of this approach is thatit contains all the advantages of standard computer aided instruction (CAI) and eliminates itsmajor disadvantage. Old CAI had a “one track mind.” The learning process in

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard M. Felder

response. Anything can serve as abasis for these exercises, including the same questions you normally ask in lectures and perhapssome others that might not be part of your current repertoire.1 For example,• Using terms a bright high school senior (a chemical engineering sophomore, your grandmother) could understand, briefly explain the concept of vapor pressure.• Why does it take much longer to prepare a hard-boiled egg at a ski resort than at the beach?• Estimate the rate of heat input to a kettle on a stove.2 Page 2.89.1• On the last homework, one student reported a required tank volume of 3.657924x106 m3. Name at least two things

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Ray N. Nitzsche

Session 2330 Cause and Effect in the Undergraduate Education Crisis Ray N. Nitzsche Parks College of Saint Louis University AbstractThis paper addresses the cause and effect relationship between the current emphasis on researchand many of the present problems in undergraduate engineering education. The CauseWe have all heard so much lately about "the crisis in undergraduate education," "the problemwith undergraduate education," or, more formally stated, the need to "reaffirm the

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

James E. Cross

a one-to-one basis to machine Page 2.43.2language. It uses words that are easily recognized such as ADD for add and SUB for subtract.Assembly programming is often the language of choice for the real-time programming ofcomputers. However, the down side to using assembly language is its lack of transportabilityfrom one type of DSP to the other and the fact that you must write your own algorithms for suchfunctions as the sine, cosine, exponential, square root, etc. High-level languages such as C,FORTRAN or MATLAB are designed with the user in mind so as to make programming easyand efficient. The down side to using such high-level languages is

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Hugh Jack

. Session 1630 Use of Computer Technology in the Classroom Hugh Jack Grand Valley State University1.0 - IntroductionWe really don’t NEED computers to teach well. But, when used effectively, computers can be anexcellent learning, communication and presentation tool.I had taught Statics to engineering students at Ryerson Polytechnic University for three yearsusing blackboard methods. In this time a complete set of notes was developed and refined

Collection

1997 Annual Conference

Authors

Leslie Bondaryk

can be addressed using multimedia is that of context for skillstudy. There is a trend these days in engineering curricula towards case-based learning becausethe linear structure of lectures and textbooks often puts the cart before the horse in terms of whywe study various topics. The origins of the linear lecture system lie in addressing the manylevels of student preparedness. In explaining how something works, we need to be sure that allthe supporting concepts are well developed in the student’s mind. However, it may be hard forstudents to see that studying atomic structure will help them to understand macro materialproperties, and hence to understand why steel is a better choice for bridge building thanaluminum, for example