Teaching resources for structural engineering

From the Bridge Investigation Project

The website of the Institution of Structural Engineers has a lot of material that teachers can use in lessons for structural engineering students.

http://www.istructe.org/home

Sections of the website include Education, which has a section for 5- to 16-year-olds and one for 16-year-olds and above. So it is useful for all levels of engineering and of language proficiency. From the first section, there is "structural engineering explained to learn what structural engineers do."

Part of this explanation is: "In a nutshell, if a structure was a human body then the architect would be concerned with the body shape and appearance, and the structural engineer would be concerned with the skeleton and sinews."

This is a very good example of explaining something simply and clearly. For engineering students it would be interesting to first ask them what a structural engineer does, and then compare their answers with this one.

A very useful sub-section of Education is Teaching resources, which includes PowerPoint presentations.

http://www.istructe.org/resources-centre/teaching-resources

The description says, "You can bring structural engineering into the classroom in a fun and meaningful way by using our various teaching resources."

An example is the "Bridge Investigation Project," in which students research a particular bridge and present their findings. The three suggestions for the research project are:

1. Choose one of the main types of bridge and tell the history of its design.
2. Choose one of the main types of bridge and describe how the structure transfers loads from the middle of the span to the supports.
3. Tell the story of a local bridge: when was it built; who built it and why; how is this bridge of benefit to the local community.

A similar project could be done with other examples of structural engineering.

The lessons are downloadable and ready to use. I wish there were websites in other engineering fields that had this kind of material for teachers!

Finally, the Education section includes Useful educational links, which are worth exploring for both teaching material and for material specifically recommended for students at all levels.

Great resource website for engineers

Here is a website - eFunda - that is a great information resource for engineers and engineering students in all disciplines. The website explains itself as:

"eFunda stands for engineering Fundamentals. Its mission is to create an online destination for the engineering community, where working professionals can quickly find concise and reliable information to meet the majority of their daily reference needs.

eFunda is all about the basics, for most part, that means college level material covered in engineering schools. If you practice engineering, more often than not you would find yourself searching for something you knew but could not quite remember. eFunda wants to be your reminder of these formulas. Not only that, eFunda wants to tell you exactly under what conditions those formulas apply, so you don't have to read an entire chapter of the good old textbook."

Link to the website: http://www.efunda.com/home.cfm

The following sections of the website include these sub-sections:

Materials

• periodic table
• steels
• aluminum
• polymers
• etc.

Design Center

• plastic design
• gages
• springs
• o-rings
• etc.

Processes

• casting
• stamping
• molding
• annealing
• etc.

Unit Conversion

• length
• mass
• pressure
• time
• etc.

Formulas

• beam
• plate
• composite
• vibration
• etc.

Mathematics

• areas
• trigonometry
• Taylor Series
• least squares
• etc.

Explanations are simple, concise and focused. This is not only useful for students' knowledge (or refreshing of knowledge), but also a good example of straightforward explanation.

Other sections of the website include a Forum, where various technical questions are discussed; Magazines for free in a wide variety of engineering and technical areas; and Calculators, which has conversions of all kinds.

All in all, a great resource for engineers, engineering students and teachers of engineering disciplines.

How Products Are Made - website

From the website's home page

This website has a lot of material for both teachers (classroom material, background, etc.) and students (research, reading, personal interests, etc.). The website's description is:

"How Products Are Made explains and details the manufacturing process of a wide variety of products, from daily household items to complicated electronic equipment and heavy machinery. The site provides step-by-step descriptions of the assembly and the manufacturing process (complemented with illustrations and diagrams). Each product also has related information such as the background, how the item works, who invented the product, raw materials that were used, product applications, by-products that are generated, possible future developments, quality control procedures, etc."

Link to the website: http://www.madehow.com/

I chose Compact Disc as an example of a description of how something is made:

"Making a compact disc involves first preparing a glass "disc master." This master is then encoded with the desired information and put through a series of electroforming steps. In electroforming, metal layers are deposited on the glass master using electric currents. When the final master version is ready, its information is transfered onto a plastic disc. A reflective aluminum layer is applied, followed by a clear acrylic protective layer, and finally the label."

Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Compact-Disc.html#ixzz36NjGBief

The explanation is clear, and provides a good model for students' own process descriptions. The diagrams are particularly useful both for students to understand and as models for them to emulate.

There are many "non-technical" products described as well, such as chocolate and chewing gum. Students will certainly find products that interest them and learn something new. Background information and history are given, then a description of the product, and finally a process description of how it is made - including visuals.

This is very useful for all types of descriptions, presentations, as well as basic information about products.

An extra section is inventor biographies - interesting for students to find out who developed these products, and how it was done.

The Engineer's Pulse blog

Visual from The Engineer's Pulse

In my post of 29 April 2014, I wrote about the Space Elevator, getting information from the website of National Geographic magazine. But on the blog The Engineer's Pulse there is a separate section for this topic. The blog itself is worth mentioning because it has a lot of interesting topics and information for students in many different areas of engineering.

http://theengineerspulse.blogspot.co.at/

On the website, it is described as "Explorations of how science, particularly the areas of Physics and Engineering, affects our lives. Topics include engineering industries, science education, philosophical anecdotes, evolving technologies, and exciting projects like the Space Elevator - written with a personal touch."

The blog is written by Stephen Cohen, a Physics Professor at Vanier College (Montreal, Canada). His master's thesis (Mechanical Engineering) describes the dynamics of a space elevator, and he has published several scientific papers on the topic. So his input is extremely focused and complete.

Another separate section of the blog is For physics students, containing physics articles organized by course subjects.

On the blog he lists his heroes:

• Carl Sagan
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Isaac Asimov
• Annie Leonard
• Stephen Hawking
• David Suzuki
• Neil deGrasse Tyson
• Peter Hadfield

It would be interesting to have students find out more about these people, and determine why they can be considered "heroes." What heroes do students have? Who would they add to this list?

Students will certainly find something on this blog that they're interested in reading about, and perhaps report what they've learned to the class - either as a presentation, discussion or a written assignment.