Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Randall A. Yoshisato

made the ability to work in teams andto communicate effectively with technical and non-technical people a fundamental jobrequirement. These “softer” skills are now no less important than technical skills. Applicants canbe reasonably certain that they will be evaluated for these skills in the hiring process.Secondly, all the technology roles and functions are now tightly directed to meet the businessobjectives. R&D and new product investments are made only after careful analysis is done on thepotential value of the work relative to the cost of development and the business risks involved.Because of the greater cost pressure from customers and the earnings pressure from investors, thelevel of high-risk, high-return projects must be carefully

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Gregory M. Dick

principles. This occurs for several reasons. It is often easier to master the skills necessary to solve a particular class of problem than it is to fully grasp the physical and mathematical principles on which the procedure is based. Engineering/Engineering Technology exams tend to emphasize problem solving; students understand this and react appropriately.Neither of these situations are fatal flaws in the educational process. They are, however,less than ideal outcomes. Educators should seek techniques that ameliorate theseoutcomes.An approach to mitigate these outcomes is to revisit the fundamentals, which wereintroduced early in the curriculum, in upper level courses. A result is an improvedunderstanding of the principles (students

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Karlesk; Hugh Jack

) devices to explore the equipment. At present studentscan simulate programs on the virtual robot. When the student is satisfied that a program isfunctional, he/she can download it to the real robot, and monitor the robot with a video link.Students are also able to read and write to a data acquisition card to read/write analog datavalues. The hardware architecture of the laboratory uses a number of networked computersrunning Linux and Windows NT. Software has been written in C/C++ as well as Java to interfacewith equipment and web clients. VRML (Virtual Reality Markup Language) has been used fordisplaying the geometry of the devices.1. INTRODUCTION: As part of a newly created manufacturing emphasis, we have added a number of coursesand

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Richard R. Schultz

filters. However, practicalaspects of DSP can be taught to students at the sophomore level, since only a minimal proficiency inmathematics is required to understand concepts such as analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analog(D/A) conversion, sampling, and data analysis. “Computer Aided Measurement and Control” has beentaught to electrical engineering sophomores at the University of North Dakota during the past severalyears. This course has evolved as a means of not only introducing students to the C++ and LabVIEWprogramming languages, but also as a practical introduction to DSP fundamentals. Students begin thecourse by learning programming skills, writing simple Microsoft Visual C++ programs which performlinear circuit simulation, random

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Carolyn L. Dull; A. George Havener

Session 1253 AN INFORMATION RESOURCE WEB-PAGE FOR A FRESHMAN PROBLEM BASED LEARNING ENGINEERING COURSE A. George Havener and Carolyn L. Dull USAF Academy, Colorado Springs, CO 80840 INTRODUCTIONAn information resource web-page has been constructed to support an experimentalfreshman engineering course at the USAF Academy (USAFA)1,2. The intent of thecourse is to use Problem Based Learning (PBL)3 to begin developing problem solvingskills while concurrently introducing engineering fundamentals to cadets. The coursedoes not have a textbook or a syllabus. Instead, the cadets

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Gary B. Randolph; Dennis O. Owen

recalling knowledge. Knowledge is only one of sixclassifications in Bloom’s taxonomy, the others being comprehension, application, analysis,synthesis and evaluation.2 The following discussion of assignments will use the Bloomtaxonomy to illustrate the value of learning experiences with the virtual library.Trade Article Review – This assignment was given in a Fundamentals of Information Systemsclass. The assignment was to find an article in a trade publication and to write a paper. The paperwas to (1) summarize the article, (2) relate it to class content, and (3) discuss the relevance of thetechnology or product to industry. In terms of Bloom’s taxonomy, this assignment involvedknowledge, comprehension, and evaluation.Technology Oral Report/Memo

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Sherra E. Kerns; Robert T. Nash; David V. Kerns

engineering students.Vanderbilt University’s Management of Technology Minor program of study is designed to provideour students the opportunity to gain a working knowledge of the fundamentals of business andengineering management. The program is open to students majoring in one of the traditionalundergraduate engineering programs offered within the Vanderbilt University School ofEngineering (VUSE). Approximately one-half of the students graduating from VUSE assume someform of management position within five years after graduation. Babcock’s 1989 study concludesthat "two-thirds of today's engineers will spend two-thirds of their careers as managers". Clearly,engineering programs have a responsibility to prepare their students for management and

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Khader

telecommunication fundamentals, networking, opticalfiber communications, wireless, are offered in the program. The specialization courses arefocused on industry practices, state of the art technologies, laboratory work, leadership as well asmanagerial skills. To keep the program focused and current, we had to balance two competing dynamics.One is how fast we need to change the curricula, and the second is making the program stable forboth faculty and students. Balancing these two forces is not always an easy task, but continuousre-evaluation seemed to give encouraging results. Re-evaluation is a continuous process of Page 3.290.2assessments and

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Michael Tarnowski; Sara Wadia-Fascetti

student work. Within each module students are required to,in addition to observing physical behavior, verify the results with both theory and computerapplications. Each laboratory activity is to be summarized in a concise technical memo.Students are graded on the quality of the technical work and the written communication. Toreinforce writing skills students are encouraged to rewrite the technical memo to improve theirgrade.COURSE DESCRIPTIONThe syllabus for the revised laboratory course is shown in Figure 1. The re-designed laboratorycurricula combine modeling and experimental activities with computer analysis and supportingtheory into a global perspective for solving structural analysis problems. Through these effortsstudent benefit is

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Mariusz Jankowski

New electronic courseware modules for selected upper-level electrical engineering courses. Mariusz Jankowski University of Southern MaineAbstractA recent award from the National Science Foundation (DUE-III program) was used toestablish a computer-integrated classroom to support instruction in selectedundergraduate electrical engineering courses. The new classroom is being used to addressthree pedagogically fundamental problems:(1) insufficient mastery of engineering mathematics by many students,(2) student passivity within the traditional lecture format,(3) insufficient use of computation and visualization in the learning process,New electronic

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Dava J. Newman; Amir R. Amir

. It was found that the best utilization of the computer classroomwas to present the history lecture based on mostly pictorial information and the human poweredflight aircraft lecture that included photographs and models of aircraft. This lecture was presentedin a slide format on the computer so that students could proceed at their own pace. The computerclassroom was also used for Web tutorials. Note-taking for students in the electronic classrooms proves to be difficult. Since most of thedesk space is taken up by the computer and the area for the mouse, writing on paper was some-what cumbersome. Current Web browsers do not offer a solution for taking notes by hand in addi-tion to interacting with the computer. Simultaneous use of a text

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Todd Nocera; Martha Cyr; John McDonald; Chris Rogers

labs (see figure 1). We began each of the classes with a ten minuteintroduction to the fundamental science and then let the students learn through performing theexperiments in the remaining 80 minutes. For most of the experiments, they had a number ofchoices in how to design, build, and execute the experiment. At the beginning of the followingclass period, they were required to hand in a 2 page lab report that answered a number ofquestions we gave them as well as described how they had executed the experiment. This write-up served two purposes: first to give them some practice in writing up what they saw andthought, and second to make sure that every student thought about the questions we asked. 1. How loud is noise

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Fred Beaufait

- Anonymous Engineering is a bridge between fundamental research laboratories and manufacturingindustries. Undergraduate students need research experience to be introduced to theinterdisciplinary nature of product development and manufacturing. Research experiencecomplements the undergraduate education that is concerned with the basic concepts of scienceand engineering. The author, in the last three years, has involved five undergraduates through testing newideas to develop material processing and manufacturing technologies. These idea-based projectsare termed by the author as "creative projects". Each creative project is completed in twosemesters. Due to the exposure to novel ideas, state-of-the-art technologies and major

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Peter T. Cummings; Hank D. Cochran; Juan J. dePablo; Denis J. Evans; Peter A. Koen; Athanassios Z. Panagiotopoulos; Richard L. Rowley

level they need to be educated in the fundamental principlesunderlying them, and the limitations and reliability of the of the techniques used. At the graduatelevel, more detailed instruction is appropriate: students should be able to modify existing codesand develop their own codes based on code elements provided to them, for application to theirown area of research.Molecular modeling methods can and will appear in undergraduate curricula in several ways: assegments of existing core undergraduate courses (for example, Thermodynamics; Kinetics;Transport; Design, in the latter case as molecular product design); within elective courses (e.g.,Biochemical Engineering; Materials Science); and as dedicated courses. To ensure that molecularmodeling

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

James P. Solti; James M., Jr. Greer

Enhancing Critical Thinking Skills Through the Incorporation of an Open-Ended and Ill-Defined Project in a Technical Core Course James P. Solti and James M. Greer, Jr. Department of Engineering Mechanics United States Air Force AcademyIntroductionEngineering Mechanics 200 (EM 200) - Fundamentals of Mechanics is an introductory“core” course which all students are required to complete prior to the start of their fifthsemester at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA). This course offers an integratedintroduction to the Mechanics of Materials and to Statics. The course is not a preparatorycourse for engineers in which students are asked to learn

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Colin S. Howat

by hand. (Objective 6 in Table 2 is to reinforce student understanding of the fundamentals. This helps to establish the understanding that chemical engineering is not magic. By estimating performance, the fundamentals are strengthened in preparation for the following.) • Have students perturb the process through estimation to project the effect of changes. (The students should write and justify their estimate of the impact of a specification on all aspects of the material balance before they run the simulator for any particular case.)Experiment Convince students to approach simulation as if it were a laboratory experiment. • Enforce experimental approach by having students

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Don L. Dekker

leakage.FINAL REPORTThe design group is then responsible for presenting and writing a comprehensive report whichdescribes their design for a "real" heat exchanger which is to be used in the plant. This redesignportion is very important because it simulates the entire product realization process. This report alsoincludes a comparison of the film coefficients which are obtained from the test results to the valuesof the film coefficients they used to design and size the heat exchanger. The final report alsore considered.The oral presentation is video taped. Each student must view the video tape and then write a onepage memo which suggests improvements the student could make individually and improvementsthe group could make on their "next" presentation

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

James L. Greer; James P. Solti; James M., Jr. Greer

Incorporating Non-Traditional Teaching Techniques in a Technical Core Course James P. Solti, James M. Greer, Jr. and James L. Greer Department of Engineering Mechanics United States Air Force AcademyIntroductionThis paper describes motivating the implementation of non-traditional teachingtechniques, such as problem-based and cooperative learning, in a technical core course atthe U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA). All students at USAFA are required to take acertain common “core” of courses. Among these courses is an Engineering Mechanicscourse covering the fundamentals of Statics and Strength of Materials (EM 200). Manyof the approximately 600 students who take the

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Svetlana Avramov-Zamurovic; Roger Ashworth

students and it is related to the ongoing research efforts of the faculty members. It is wonderful opportunity for the interested students to obtain some research experience and it provides students prospective to the faculty member. Very often the high level research is way beyond student’s comprehension. Having motivated student engaged in a project results in the focus on fundamentals. Through these discussions most of the time both the student and the teacher benefit. TVC FUNDAMENTALS TVC consists of a resistor, R, and a thermoelement (TE) connected in series. The resistor limits the current, I, through the TE. A TE consists of a low resistance heater to which a temperature sensor

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

John K. Estell

address ‘addr’ INA 07 Read integer from input text field into accumulator OUT 08 Write integer in accumulator to output text field END 09 End programFigure 1. The simple instruction set.simulator class that extends the Applet class, and design the graphical user interface (GUI). In-class discussions are held to assist students in determining what methods and data structures areneeded for each module and as to what should appear on the GUI.The Flag class is the simplest to implement; it needs only a boolean instance variable to representthe state of the flag, and both get and set methods for accessing the value of the instance variable.A constructor method should be included so

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Susan M. Bolton; Scott D. Bergen; James L. Fridley

ecological principles that integrate human society with its naturalenvironment for the benefit of both. In a previous paper we discussed in detail our concept ofecological engineering, its potential scope of application, and a broad outline of an undergraduatecurriculum (Bergen et al., 1997a). In this paper we present a specific curriculum designed as atrack in a proposed natural resources engineering degree program.We believe ecological engineering is a distinct discipline with ecology as its fundamental sciencebase. Students will learn to practice design with an appreciation for the relationship of organisms(including humans) with their environment and the constraints on design imposed by thecomplexity, variability and uncertainty inherent to

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Stephen M. Williams; Byron P. Newberry

to provide students with rapid feedback). We have developed an exam format which we apply consistently for all exams on allunits of material. Each exam has ten (10) fundamental engineering problems. Each unit ofmaterial lasts three weeks, or nine class periods, so there is roughly a one-to-one correspondencebetween class lectures and exam problems. The problems on the exams are modeled directlyupon problems in the problem sets of the texts. Next to each problem statement on the exampaper is an answer block in which to write the solution to the problem. Solutions written in theanswer block are graded with no partial credit. In order for a solution to be scored as correct, thenumerical value must be correct to three significant figures

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

E. L. Gerber

requiring the programinput be written in a form that is removed from the mathematical representation of the real system.Maple solves equations in their basic form. That is the user must be able to write the appropriateequations for the system in order for Maple to solve. Maple provides an extremely powerful “math-solving” computer package. Developed bymathematicians, it is not always user friendly in solving engineering problems. Maple is notdesigned to solve circuits or systems; however, it can solve most circuits and systems equations. Inaddition to being able to solve these equations quickly, it has substantial graphic capabilities. Thesetwo properties, speed and graphics, make it a valuable learning tool for electrical and

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Kenneth Miller; Jeffrey Morehouse; Edward Young; David Rocheleau; Jed S. Lyons

Carolina is sequence of four mechanical engineering laboratory courses: Measurements andInstrumentation, Engineering Materials, Fundamentals of Microprocessors, and SeniorLaboratory. Senior Lab is a two-credit hour course consisting of one hour of lecture and threehours of lab each week. Laboratories are offered to sections of about eight students. Currently, itis a good class, but not a great class. The existing experiments were selected primarily to supportupper-level mechanical engineering courses, and include Psychrometric Study Of ConditionedAir, Air Conditioner COP As Function Of Condenser Temperature, Transient Heat Conduction,Heat Transfer To Circular Cylinder In Cross Flow, Hydraulic And Energy Grade Line, InternalCombustion Engine

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Jack Swearengen; Hakan Gürocak

Design Project ME 416 3 crs Engr. Administration CE 463 3 crs Mfg. Automation ME 475 3 crs Seminar in Manufacturing ME 400 2 crs Mfg. Engr. Electives 6 crs[general education requirements] 27 cr Introductory Writing Engl 101 3 crs World Civ I & II Gen Ed 110, 111 6 crs Fundamentals of Macroeconomics Econ 102 3 crs Tech & Prof Writing Engl 402 3 crs Biological science GER

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

J. N. Dahiya; B. F. Draayer

with interrupt 17. To read the switchsettings, the students use debug, a dos utility, to write a short assembly language program:100 MOV AH, FF ; Turn all LEDs on initially102 MOV DX, 0 ; Access LPT1105 MOV AL, AH ; Transfer inputs to data out107 MOV AH, 0 ; Erase old inputs109 INT 17 ; Use BIOS interrupt 17 to read/write data10B JMP 105 ; Infinite loopUsing the ADC 0804 After familiarizing themselves with the functioning of the parallel port, the students use anADC 0804 analog to digital converter to digitize an analog signal and display it on the computer.Since the 0804 is an eight bit converter and the

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

S. Cem Karacal; John A. Barker; Jacob Van Roekel

perceived problem in a given situation. The reasoning skills alsoenhanced their technical report writing skills. When students were asked to recall some of thecategorical and propositional argument structures that they dealt with earlier, reports becamemore precise and the design concepts were more effectively expressed. Certain key words Page 3.278.4learned in argument evaluation were used appropriately to give precise meanings to sentences.Although it is difficult to assess, we think that the reasoning skills also helped students organizetheir thoughts more effectively and evaluate situations more accurately during the problem-solving

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Siegfried M. Holzer; Raul H. Andruet

, learning skills, interpersonal skills, and self-esteem, and it creates alearning community (Gardiner, 1996). Moreover, "Team learning is vital because teams, notindividuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations" (Senge, 1990).Experiential learning has its roots in the works of Dewey, Lewin, and Piaget [Kolb, 1984]. Itfocuses on the central role that experience plays in the learning process, where "concepts arederived and continuously modified by experience. No two thoughts are ever the same, sinceexperience always intervenes" (Kolb, 1984, p. 26). Kolb (1984, p. 21) defines experientiallearning as "a holistic integrative perspective on learning that combines experience, perception,cognition, and behavior." This

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Herbert Hess

.Demonstration of Voltage Flicker IEC 1000-3-3 defines flicker as the noticeable variation in intensity of a light source.3Flicker may occur at any repetition rate, rapid or slow. On the utility distribution system, flickeroccurs in response to variations in distribution voltage amplitude, hence the common designation"voltage flicker”.3 Voltage flicker is defined as a percentage of the rms fundamental voltageamplitude. The threshold of perception varies greatly with the frequency of the flicker.Psychological studies show flicker to be most noticeable in the range of six to eight Hertz.3 Loads that exhibit rapid variations in current magnitude are the most common cause offlicker. The variation in current magnitude appears as a voltage drop

Collection

1998 Annual Conference

Authors

Daina Briedis

explanation of the relationship of the device(or concept) to the fluid flow and/or heat transfer fundamentals discussed in class, and a technicaland, where possible, quantitative analysis of the parameters of the problem. Commentary on Page 3.384.2safety, environmental or societal impact is required as appropriate for the project. The papers aregraded with typical standards for written work (content, organization, style, grammar).In addition to the above requirements, the oral presentation must also show evidence of goodpreparation: a) smooth flow from one speaker to another and good budgeting of allotted time;b) clear speaking and effective visual