Teaching
2024 Winter
ME 395 Laboratory I: Teaching Team, Profs. Volker Sick, Chris Vermillion and Jing Tang
Held Weekly: Monday 1:30-3 PM, Friday 1:30-3 PM, 1013 Dow
Office Hours: Tuesday/Thursday 12-1 PM & by Appointment, (In person, 3458 GG Brown)
Course Topics
1. Laboratory safety and procedures
2. Measurements and error analysis
3. Tensile tests, fracture, and yield of materials
4. Analysis of a thermodynamic cycle
5. System identification and control
6. Flow measurement and performance of a turbomachine
7. Wind tunnel measurements
8. Dimensional analysis
Course Description
- Weekly lectures and experiments designed to introduce the student to the basics of experimentation, instrumentation, data collection and analysis, error analysis, and reporting.
- Topics will include fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, mechanics, materials, and dynamical systems. Emphasis is placed on report writing and team-building skills.
Course Philosophy
The structure, content, and grading schemes in ME 395
- Expose students to a wide variety of experimental techniques in mechanical engineering,
- Teach students how to deal with uncertainty in mechanical engineering,
- Demonstrate and reinforce major concepts of mechanical engineering science,
- Teach students effective written and oral methods of technical communication,
- Understand and practice working and communicating in diverse teams, and
- Ensure that students can complete laboratory tasks and generate comprehensive reports in teams.
To achieve these goals, students are given the opportunity to work on teams that perform experiments, analyze the measurements, and communicate the results clearly. These opportunities are supported by the use of technical scenarios that put the laboratory and communication task in an engineering context. In addition, faculty from the Technical Communications Program are fully included in both the instruction and grading of the course.
