GIFTS: Concrete Is My Jam!

Christopher C Frishcosy

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Conference: 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)
Location: Boston, Massachusetts
Publication Date: July 28, 2024
Start Date: July 28, 2024
End Date: July 30, 2024
Page Count: 2
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--48616
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/48616
Download Count: 30

Paper Authors

biography

Christopher C Frishcosy University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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My career in higher education started in the fall of 2021 when I was hired as the lab director for the civil engineering program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. My enthusiasm for teaching was quickly realized and I was granted the opportunity to teach the Introduction to Civil Engineering course; along with the laboratory courses that I instruct. My goal for instructing this introductory course was to develop a curriculum that is fundamentally informative and, borderline, overwhelmingly engaging. I want my students to learn about civil engineering to ensure their intended career field, and for most of the learning to occur through participation. It is this mindset that helped me create “Concrete Is My Jam!” and many other similar activities. While I have been excited about my style of teaching, I am interested in learning about different approaches to engineering education and the realm of pedagogical research pertaining to first-year engineering students.

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Abstract

Concrete Is My Jam! is an engaging activity in which participants are instructed through their preparation of a no-cook freezer jam while the facilitator relates the ingredients and interactions (physical and chemical) for jamming to the basic constituents in and processes essential for mixing concrete. The four ingredients used to make jam, based on a box recipe, are: a type of fruit, sugar, added pectin, and lemon juice. In recipe order, strawberries have proven to be a tasty and appealing fruit option for this activity as they, considering their size, are easily compared to coarse aggregate used in concrete. Subsequently, granulated sugar is juxtaposed with fine aggregate, pectin powder with cement, and lemon juice with admixtures. The water that is required to hydrate the pectin is introduced through the ‘mixing process’, i.e. smashing the strawberries. This water is analogous to the, well, water that is used to hydrate cement when mixing concrete. Throughout “Concrete Is My Jam!”, the facilitator can discuss the value of each jam ingredient and how its compared equivalent affects the performance of concrete. For examples: gradation, density, air voids, particle packing, and granularity, can be introduced during the aggregate portion, while the pectin / cement comparison allows for hands-on association with concepts such as workability, set time, and concrete curing. In conclusion of this activity, it is critical to mention or reiterate the importance of a concrete mix design. Just as a recipe was followed while making the jam, engineers and mix designers study the material constituents and proportion them to meet specific performance criteria. The analogies encompassed in “Concrete Is My Jam!” can be expressed to interest and inform a range of educational levels. While this activity has primarily been conducted as a fun civil materials activity for a college-level Introduction to Civil Engineering course over the past two years, it has also been used to engage visiting intermediate and secondary student groups with the science of mixing concrete.

Citation
Format

Frishcosy, C. C. (2024, July), GIFTS: Concrete Is My Jam! Paper presented at 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts. 10.18260/1-2--48616