Education Commons^™

Reducing Food Scarcity: The Benefits Of Urban Farming, S.A. Claudell, Emilio Mejia

Journal of Nonprofit Innovation

Urban farming can enhance the lives of communities and help reduce food scarcity. This paper presents a conceptual prototype of an efficient urban farming community that can be scaled for a single apartment building or an entire community across all global geoeconomics regions, including densely populated cities and rural, developing towns and communities. When deployed in coordination with smart crop choices, local farm support, and efficient transportation then the result isn’t just sustainability, but also increasing fresh produce accessibility, optimizing nutritional value, eliminating the use of ‘forever chemicals’, reducing transportation costs, and fostering global environmental benefits.

Imagine Doris, who is …

Barriers To Use Of Cross-Laminated Timber In Maine, Shane R. O'Neill

Forest Resources Faculty Scholarship

To increase understanding of both the adoption rate and in-state manufacturing of mass timber In Maine, the 131^st Legislature and Governor Mills passed LD 881, a resolve directing a study of the barriers facing cross-laminated timber In Maine and provide recommendations to promote their use in construction. This study was developed in response to the resolve. The study engaged 108 unique participants to define available training, education, and experiences across the stakeholders throughout the building lifecycle process in the state.

From this information, the following five recommendations are proposed:

1. Understand the policies and initiatives of other states to develop …

Radiation Exposure Calibration Of The Al2o3:C With Radium-226 And Cesium-137 Using The Osl Method, Selma Tepeli Aydin

All Theses

Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dosimetry was utilized to calibrate Al₂O₃:C powder dosimeters, available commercially as the nanoDot® from Landauer Inc., and compare the dosimeter response to radium-226 (²²⁶Ra) and cesium-137 (¹³⁷Cs). The signal from the OSL was quantified using a microSTARii^® OSL reader also produced by Landauer Inc. Dose-response curves were developed for ²²⁶Ra and ¹³⁷Cs experiments (5 dosimeters each) at thirteen absorbed doses. Individual dosimeter response was tracked by serial number. Linear regression analysis was performed to determine if there were significant differences between the intercepts of the …

Additive Manufacturing For Medical Education, Michael Noon

College of Engineering Summer Undergraduate Research Program

A growing body of evidence is suggesting that anatomical knowledge, the keystone of many medical specialties, is suffering among new graduates. While a host of reasons are provided, one common thread that many point to is the decline of cadaver dissections in the classroom. Many virtual audio-visual tools are used to address this gap, yet evidence has shown their ineffectiveness. Given this gap, the high degree of flexibility found in additive manufacturing (AM), and the many uses AM has already found in the medical field, we propose its use to fill this gap, allowing for students to learn with touch …

Fungi In Flux | Designing Regenerative Materials And Products With Mycelium, Arvind Bhallamudi

Masters Theses

As the world grapples with the escalating crisis of climate threats and environmental degradation, this research delves into the synergistic potential of design and biology, developing safe and sustainable materials for applications in prototyping, furniture and interior design. Harnessing the power of a unique organism - fungi, the study proposes an accessible, efficient, and resilient material resource system. It utilizes local waste streams and mycelium (the vegetative part of fungi) to grow functional structures. An experimental and small-scale protocol is modeled by testing bio-fabrication and bio-printing methods. The composites' performance qualities and characteristics are evaluated through mechanical testing and a …

Could The Inclusion Of Certain Building Information And Modelling Aspects Into The Leaving Certificate Engineering Syllabus, Aid The Transition Of Students Into Third Level Education, When Choosing A Course Within The Construction Industry, Joseph Boyle, Deborah M. Brennan

Capstone Reports

The paper investigates the effects of implementing several Building Information and Modelling (BIM) aspects into the Leaving Certificate Engineering Syllabus and examines the impact this has on students choosing third level Architectural Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry courses with the desire of improving the shortage in the sector. The method and content of the study was based on academic research on second level education in other European countries through the lens of a Literature Review. A sixteen-week pilot program was trialed with over one hundred students at Senior Cycle. The outcomes of the study were critically evaluated through stakeholder interviews …

Bbt Acoustic Alternative Top Bracing Cadd Data Set-Norev-2022jun28, Bill Hemphill

STEM Guitar Project’s BBT Acoustic Kit

This electronic document file set consists of an overview presentation (PDF-formatted) file and companion video (MP4) and CADD files (DWG & DXF) for laser cutting the ETSU-developed alternate top bracing designs and marking templates for the STEM Guitar Project’s BBT (OM-sized) standard acoustic guitar kit. The three (3) alternative BBT top bracing designs in this release are
(a) a one-piece base for the standard kit's (Martin-style) bracing,
(b) 277 Ladder-style bracing, and
(c) an X-braced fan-style bracing similar to traditional European or so-called 'classical' acoustic guitars.

The CADD data set for each of the three (3) top bracing designs includes …

Bbt Side Mold Assy, Bill Hemphill

STEM Guitar Project’s BBT Acoustic Kit

This electronic document file set covers the design and fabrication information of the ETSU Guitar Building Project’s BBT (OM-sized) Side Mold Assy for use with the STEM Guitar Project’s standard acoustic guitar kit. The extended 'as built' data set contains an overview file and companion video, the 'parent' CADD drawing, CADD data for laser etching and cutting a drill &/or layout template, CADD drawings in AutoCAD .DWG and .DXF R12 formats of the centerline tool paths for creating the mold assembly pieces on an AXYZ CNC router, and support documentation for CAM applications including router bit specifications, feeds, speed, multi-pass …

Let's Get Serious About It: Plastic-Free Campus Initiative, Geoffrey Kain, Camdyn Doucette, Regan Bossie

Sustainability Conference

On February 23, 2022, the UN agreed to start negotiating a world-first global treaty on plastic waste--since nearly 200 nations unanimously agreed to move toward a legally binding plastics treaty by 2024. In 2019 the UN Environmental Programme report highlighted that "our world is drowning in plastic." As with the climate change crisis (to which plastics production and disposal are also linked), the data resoundingly illustrate the imminent systemic threat that disposable plastics pose to the world's seas, freshwater sources, soils, food supply, air, and species. Nevertheless, plastics production is predicted to rise dramatically over the next 20 years, with …

Magnetic And Structural Effects In Interfacial Magnetism: Molecular Magnets And Ferrimagnetic Alloys, Jenae E. Shoup

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic thin films are important for technological applications such as giant magnetoresistance,spin valves and magnetic tunnel junctions. A key feature for these applications to be possible is the interface between two materials. We will be studying two types of thin film magnetism; interfaces between molecular carbon, C60, and non-magnetic/ferromagnetic material and two layers of ferrimagnetic rare earth/ transition metal alloys (RE/TM) that have similar composition to engineer a magnetic tunable interface.

One of the most unexpected spin-related properties of C60 is the emergence of room-temperature ferromagnetism in multilayer films of C60 and non-ferromagnetic transition metals such as Cu or Mn …

Spin Coupling In Magnetic Core - Shell Nanoparticles, Corisa Kons

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) have garnered much interest due to the unique properties that emergewhen compared to their bulk counterparts. In particular, core-shell (CS) NPs offer the ability to tailor the magnetic properties of the system through careful selection of core and shell constituent materials. In this work, the magnetic ordering of CS NPs with contrast in core/shell features (moment, anisotropy, coercivity, etc.) have been investigated using a combination of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism spectroscopy (XMCD) and polarized small angle neutron scattering (SANS). First, temperature-dependent analyses of XMCD and SANS studies were carried out for CS NPs featuring a core composed …

Material And Topographically Optimized Thermal Dissipation For High-Performance Electronic Devices Utilizing Vapor Chambers, Derek Joseph Daniels

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Advances in materials science and engineering in the field of thermal transport and dissipation enable the use of higher-performance electronic devices that are smaller and generate more heat. Phase change thermal transport systems such as heat pipes and vapor chambers enable passive dissipation from devices that generate excessive heat without the need for actively pumped cooling systems. Properly designed vapor chamber enabled systems easily exceed the thermal conductivity of manufactured diamond at a small fraction of the cost.[1][2][3] While heat pipe phase change systems are generally one-dimensional with a limited cross section, vapor chambers are generally two-dimensional with a small …

Laser-Induced Modifications In Two-Dimensional Materials, Tariq Afaneh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted a growing interest in the lastdecade from the fundamental point of view as well as their potential applications in functional devices. Due to their high surface-to-volume ratio, the physical properties of 2D materials are very sensitive to the environmental factor such as surrounding media and illumination conditions (e.g. light-mater interaction). In the first part of this dissertation I will present recent advances in developing laser-assisted methods to tune the physical properties of 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). We demonstrate laser-assisted chemical modification ultrathin TMDs, locally replacing selenium by sulfur atoms. The photo-conversion process …

Demonstration Of A Distributed Bragg Reflector For Polyvinylcarbazole And Cadmium Sulfide Layers: Modeling And Comparison To Experimental Results, Javier E. Hasbun, L. Ajith Desilva

Georgia Journal of Science

Light wave propagation in a periodically stratified medium has many applications in physics, mathematics, and engineering. The subject is of interest to students, teachers, and researchers, as it presents a great opportunity to focus on principles of optics and to understand the basics of mathematical modeling. A complete theory of wave propagation can be derived using Born’s optics theory. We employed that theory to determine the reflectivity of a one-dimensional distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and do simulations using MATLAB. A DBR is a photonic crystal consisting of alternating layers of materials with different refractive indices. In this study, we modeled …

Product Realization Capstone: Element Proof Safety Steps For Willie Price Lab School, Catherine Thomas, Allan Heuerman, Jared Mumme

Honors Theses

The purpose of this document is to describe the process we took to complete our capstone which paired the Center for Manufacturing Excellence with the Willie Price Lab School. The goal of the capstone was to remake step stools for the students of Willie Price, as the last stools failed to withstand weather damage. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, plans were hindered, shifting the goal from actually producing the steps to creating instructions so that a younger Center for Manufacturing class could complete the production at a later date. Standardized Work Instructions, a detailed production plan, and engineering drawings were …

Designing An Adjustable And Transportable Staircase, Allison Currey

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

People climb stairs every day, whether it is at work, a store, or at home; however, there are populations such as people who are elderly, with pathologies, with Parkinson’s disease, or have suffered from a stroke that see climbing the stairs as a challenging task and it decreases their mobility and quality of life. Factors such as muscle weakness, strategy, and balance have been previously investigated in these populations during stair climbing. However, few studies have researched how stair climb ability, balance, and perception of difficulty are influenced by step height. The objective of this thesis is to design a …

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 …

Open-Ended Capstone Project: Designing And Manufacturing Of A Low-Cost Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composite Suborbital Rocket Payload Housing Using A 3d Printed Core, Garam Kim, Sergey Dubikovsky, Peng Hao Wang, Ronald Sterkenburg

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Composite materials are utilized in many industries today due to its high performance and lightweight. However, the part manufacturing process of traditional composites is complicated and often involves high cost. The molds used for composite manufacturing are usually one of the contributors to the high part manufacturing cost. The authors demonstrated in this paper a manufacturing process for a carbon fiber reinforced composite rocket payload housing using an additively manufactured polylactic acid (PLA) payload housing core. The paper also demonstrates the designing and manufacturing of a functional product, which was used in a real-life application, achieved by college undergraduate students. …

Tabletop Mechanical Tester, Jamie Dombroski, Brian English, Richard Leffler, Andrew Shirk

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The need for hands-on and face-to-face experiences in the engineering classroom is very great. The equations, principles, and concepts can all be learned, but without the visual and tactile application, these don’t always sink in or become concrete. A small-scale tensile test machine was designed, sourced, manufactured, and tested for the purpose of being applied in classroom settings to provide this experience to engineering students. Extensive research was performed concerning tensile machines on the market, the essential elements of which are the load cell, grips, crosshead, extensometer, motor, and frame. The raw materials for the frame were purchased and drawings …

Teaching Top-Down Approaches To The Engineering Design Process, Joshua E. Katz, Joshua E. Katz

STAR Program Research Presentations

One of the main focuses of metacognition is to have students think about their learning. By bringing the engineering design process with educational psychology together, it can lead to a society that thinks more in-depth on various topics. The goal of the internship was to utilize and teach top-down educational and instructional objectives. Throughout the project, we followed a modified progression of the System Architecture Methodology to help other interns think in a top-down fashion. The purpose of this procedure is to create and induce new innovative and creative ideas for different projects. As teaching this methodology was tasked, research …

Voices Of Our Students: Using Evidence-Based Methods To Inform A Multidisciplinary Engineering Program Design, Vicki Stieha, Noah Salzman, Amy J. Moll

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Listening carefully to our students and integrating the variables that matter to them is a step that we can take to increase the number of women and underrepresented minority graduates in engineering. This paper shares an evaluative case study as we report findings from data gathering tools guiding our continuous improvement process. The findings illuminate students’ perceptions of their engineering design course and curriculum. We conclude by discussing the pedagogical decisions the teaching team is making as a result of listening to our students’ voices.

Project Excel: Web-Based Scanning Electron Microscopy For K-12 Education, L. Scott Chumbley, Connie P. Hargrave, Kristen P. Constant, Brian Hand, Thomas Andre, E. Ann Thompson

Constance P. Hargrave

Project ExCEL (Extended Classroom for Enhanced Learning) brings the capabilities of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) into classrooms. University and industry personnel, working together, have developed a web-based interface to allow schools to control a modern SEM. The interface allows a user control of the operating parameters of the microscope, stage movement, and chemical analysis. Such total control is not available on any other system. Since Iowa State University (ISU) pioneered the idea of remote SEM for education, researchers have learned that providing teachers access to sophisticated equipment does not ensure that it will be used. Teachers are busy, and structured …

Project Excel—Web-Based Sem For K–12 Education, L. Scott Chumbley, Kristen P. Constant, Connie P. Hargrave, Tom Andre

Constance P. Hargrave

The goal of Project ExCEL, the Extended Classroom for Enhanced Learning, is to bring the capabilities of Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) into elementary and secondary classrooms. We have developed an entirely web-based interface to allow schools to control a modern SEM. The web interface allows a remote user complete control of all the operating parameters of the microscope, including stage movement and x-ray chemical analysis. Such total control currently is not available on any other system. Since pioneering the idea of remote SEM use for K-12 education in the early 1990s, we have learned that merely providing schools and teachers …

Design Of A Carburizing Treatment Of Steel Base Gear In The Materials Science Course, Jiliang Li, Jin Xu, Nuri Zeytinoglu, Jinyuan Zhai

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Diffusion PDE Application to Carburizing Treatment of Steel Base Gear

An introductory materials-science course is required in the mechanical engineering curriculum of many universities. This article describes an example effort to incorporate programming, diffusion transfer, heat treatment process and mechanical-property determination as an integral part of the materials-science course instruction. This effort was undertaken in order to give students additional experience in Fick’s 1^st and 2^nd laws and in-depth understanding of physics and mathematics involved in diffusion analysis. We chose to focus on Fick’s second law because its applications are not restricted to the materials-science field [1]. As …

Magneto-Active Slosh Control System Using Free Floating Membrane For Cylinderical Propellant Tanks Read More: Https://Arc.Aiaa.Org/Doi/Abs/10.2514/6.2019-2177, Pedro Llanos

Pedro J. Llanos (www.AstronauticsLlanos.com)

Work In Progress: Institutional Context And The Implementation Of The Redshirt In Engineering Model At Six Universities, Ann Delaney, Donna C. Llewellyn, Janet Callahan

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Low-income students are underrepresented in engineering and are more likely to struggle in engineering programs. Such students may be academically talented and perform well in high school, but may have relatively weak academic preparation for college compared to students who attended better-resourced schools. Four-year engineering and computer science curricula are designed for students who are calculus-ready, but many students who are eager to become engineers or computer scientists need additional time and support to succeed. The NSF-funded Redshirt in Engineering Consortium was formed in 2016 as a collaborative effort to build on the success of three existing “academic Redshirt” programs …

The Redshirt In Engineering Consortium: Progress And Early Insights, Janet Callahan, Donna C. Llewellyn, Ann E. Delaney

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The NSF-funded Redshirt in Engineering Consortium was formed in 2016 with the goal of enhancing the ability of academically talented but underprepared students coming from lowincome backgrounds to successfully graduate with engineering degrees. The Consortium takes its name from the practice of redshirting in college athletics, with the idea of providing an extra year and support to help promising engineering students complete a bachelor’s degree. The Consortium builds on the success of three existing “academic redshirt” programs and expands the model to three new schools. The Existing Redshirt Institutions (ERIs) help mentor and train the new Student Success Partners (SSPs), …

Accelerated Creative Problem Solving And Product Improvement Applied To Experimental Devices In A Bloodstain Pattern Interpretation Class--Improving The Role Of Insight Development Tools As A Generator Of New Ideas In Novel Situations, Douglas Ridolfi

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project uses an action research centered study protocol to examine the effects of a problem-based learning exercise related to bloodstain pattern interpretation in a crime scene processing and general criminalistics class taught as part of an upper division forensic chemistry major in a four year college. The goal is to apply design principles and creative problem solving methods directly adapted to a project involving interpreting a set of crime scene photographs depicting blood spatter and with the aid of guided exercises in ideation and design, lead students into the development of alternate theories of how the bloodstains were created …

Redshirt In Engineering: A Model For Improving Equity And Inclusion, Donna C. Llewellyn, Ann Delaney, Janet Callahan

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The NSF-funded Redshirt in Engineering Consortium was formed in 2016 with the goal of enhancing the ability of academically talented but underprepared students coming from low-income backgrounds to successfully graduate with engineering degrees. The Consortium takes its name from the practice of redshirting in college athletics, with the idea of providing an extra year and support to help promising engineering students complete a bachelor’s degree. The Consortium builds on the success of three existing “academic redshirt” programs and expands the model to three new schools. The Existing Redshirt Institutions (ERIs) help mentor and train the new Student Success Partners (SSP), …

Computational Discovery Of Energetic Polynitrogen Compounds At High Pressure, Brad A. Steele

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

High-nitrogen-content energetic compounds containing multiple N-N bonds are an attractive alternative towards developing new generation of environmentally friendly, and more powerful energetic materials. High-N content translates into much higher heat of formation resulting in much larger energy output, detonation pressure and velocity upon conversion to large amounts of non-toxic, strongly bonded N2 gas. This thesis describes recent advances in the computational discovery of group-I alkali and hydrogen polynitrogen materials at high pressures using powerful first-principles evolutionary crystal structure prediction methods. This is highlighted by the discovery of a new family of materials that consist of long-sought after all-nitrogen N􀀀 5 …