For the past 3 years LEGOs have been used to teach design, creativity, and structured programming to freshmen mechanical engineering students at the University of Nevada, Reno. MECH 151 is a 3-credit hour course offered as the second semester of a first year mechanical engineering design sequence. The class utilizes a projectbased learning environment, which consists of approximately I O design projects of increasing dflculty and scope. The course culminates with a robot battle and a presentation to local K-12 schools. Assessment methods include student surveys, external evaluators, evaluation of projects, and enrollment data. The use of LEGOs was found appealing to the students while providing an excellent medium for teaching design, programming, and creativity. Student enrollment has grown over 2 fold since the introduction of LEGOs.the LEGO RCX (e. g. [2]) and the MIT Handy Board (e.g.[3]). Deemed more appropriate for freshmen mechanical engineering students, the RCX (Figure l), in combination with ROBOLAB, was selected for use in MECH 15 1.
This work-in-progress presentation describes the use of a Leg0 robotics kit and RoboLab software to meet the science, math, and technology standards of local elementary school curricula. The presentation includes a demonstration by a kindergartener. The instructional materials used include a standard Leg0 Mindstorms kit and the Robolab. Robolab is based on LabVIEW and retains the iconic programming interface. Assessment of student learning includes both formal, pre-and post multiple choice testing and demonstration of ability to "read" programs, and informal, project outcomes. Index Terms -elementary school, labview. lego, robolab
As one component of a college-wide redesign of its introductory engineering courses, a project-based introduction to computer science is being developed using open-source software running under the GNU/Linux operating system. Course components include hardware assembly, operating system and software installation, basic system administration, and a working introduction to the engineering design process through the completion of several collaborative projects involving content-based graphic design and computer animation. Through three semesters, the course has gravitated away from a modulebased survey of fundamental concepts in computer science and engineering toward greater student exploration of fewer topics most relevant to the projects. Continuing assessment of each phase of the course provides formative and summative feedback and has played an important role in the maturation of the course.
Toward the general goal of preventing ankle injuries in snowboarding accidents, the objective of this project to develop a dynamic system model of a snowboarder and assess which model parameters, particularly those attributed to the boot, most strongly influenced ankle deflections during a forward fall. To satisfy this objective, a system model was created that included the rider, the boots, the snowboard, and the snow as components. Through dynamic simulations, peak ankle deflections were computed over realistic ranges of input parameter values for each of the model components. Defining sensitivity as the total change in peak ankle deflection over the range of a particular parameter studied, results indicated that the peak ankle deflection was most sensitive to the boot stiffness. Although lower, the sensitivity of the peak ankle deflection to the snow model parameters was still significant, being roughly half of the boot sensitivity. Increases in both snow stiffness and snow damping caused higher ankle deflections. Variations in both snowboard stiffness and anthropometric parameters had little effect. Due to the strong dependence of ankle deflection on boot stiffness, the potential exists for mitigating the ankle injury problem through judicious design of the boot.
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