Real life examples in a Solid Mechanics course

Abstract

Research has indicated that a good percentage of students who are dropping out of engineering are doing so because they have either lost interest or actually come to dislike studying it. This paper describes an effort to better connect students to engineering by incorporating lecture materials into a Solid Mechanics course that use example problems that students encounter in their every day lives. For example, rather than drawing a picture of an axial load being applied to a steel bar to talk about axial stress and strain, a pair of iPod headphones is shown and a discussion moderated about what kind of load would be needed to break them and how much would they stretch. The real life examples adopted in this course were first created by Eann Patterson as part of a National Science Foundation sponsored project to change the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum and make it more attractive to a diverse group of students. Specifically, this paper critiques the adaptation of five real life examples taken from the original project. Student response to the lecture material was measured by specific survey questions about the real life examples, survey questions about the course as a whole, interviews, and standard student course evaluation forms. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2010.