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Full-Text Articles in Mechanical Engineering
Concrete Beam Design: Pouring The Foundation To Engineering In T&E Classrooms, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill
Concrete Beam Design: Pouring The Foundation To Engineering In T&E Classrooms, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill
Educational Leadership & Technology Faculty Publications
Ask a middle or high school student if they could design a concrete beam that weighs only 20 pounds and is 36” long but must hold 600 pounds without failing. What is the student likely to say? What if the student was told that, with some optimized decision making based on relatively straightforward mathematics, their beam could hold 2400 pounds or more? The focus of this article is not on concrete beam design, it is rather an introduction to engineering principles in beam design using a lab activity. The concepts and skills learned in this article will lead students into …
Analyzing Concrete Beam Design: Verifying Predictions In T&Ee Classrooms, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill
Analyzing Concrete Beam Design: Verifying Predictions In T&Ee Classrooms, Andrew J. Hughes, Chris Merrill
Educational Leadership & Technology Faculty Publications
Design is often accepted as a fundamental aspect of engineering (Dym, et al., 2005). The design process is frequently portrayed as a set of steps. However, the design process is more complex than just a set of steps in a relatively fixed process. The complex nature of design, design thinking, questioning, and decision-making is exactly what technology and engineering classrooms are well suited to address. When addressing the question—“Why is technology and engineering education (T&EE) so important?”—the authors believe T&EE’s importance relates to our discipline’s ability to solve complex problems by balancing theory and practice in engaging hands-on learning scenarios …