How do strong and weak acids differ? Use lab tools on your computer to find out! Dip the paper or the probe into solution to measure the pH, or put in the electrodes to measure the conductivity. Then see how concentration and strength affect pH. Can a weak acid solution have the same pH as a strong acid solution?

In this Activity, students will practice asking and answering interview questions. They will also practice using vocabulary surrounding careers and the workplace and speaking about hypothetical situations.Can-Do Statements:I can discuss my career and discuss if I like it or not.I can answer interview questions and speak about my answer.I can talk about my strength and weakness.

In this activity, students will practice asking and answering interview questions. They will also practice using vocabulary surrounding careers and the workplace and speaking about hypothetical situations.Can-Do Statements:I can discuss my career and discuss if I like it or not.I can answer interview questions and speak about my answer.I can talk about my strength and weakness.

This semester students are asked to transform the Hereshoff Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, through processes of erasure and addition. Hereshoff Manufacturing was recognized as one of the premier builders of America’s Cup racing boats between 1890’s and 1930’s. The studio, however, is about more than the program. It is about land, water, and wind and the search for expressing materially and tectonically the relationships between these principle conditions. That is, where the land is primarily about stasis (docking, anchoring and referencing our locus), water’s fluidity holds the latent promise of movement and freedom. Movement is activated by wind, allowing for negotiating the relationship between water and land.

Students explore the properties of composites using inexpensive materials and processing techniques. They create beams using Laffy Taffy and water, and a choice of various reinforcements (pasta, rice, candies) and fabricating temperatures. Student groups compete for the highest strength beam. They measure flexure strength with three-point bend tests and calculations. Results are compared and discussed to learn how different materials and reinforcement shapes affect material properties and performance.

Students learn about material properties, and that engineers must consider many different materials properties when designing. This activity focuses on strength-to-weight ratios and how sometimes the strongest material is not always the best material.

In this optics activity, learners examine how polarized light can reveal stress patterns in clear plastic. Learners place a fork between two pieces of polarizing material and induce stress by squeezing the tines together. Learners will observe the colored stress pattern in the image of the plastic that is projected onto a screen using an overhead projector. Learners rotate one of the polarizing filters to explore which orientations give the most dramatic color effects. This activity can be related to bones, as bones develop stress patterns from the loads imposed upon them every day.

In this math activity, students conduct a strength test using modeling clay, creating their own stress vs. strain graphs, which they compare to typical steel and concrete graphs. They learn the difference between brittle and ductile materials and how understanding the strength of materials, especially steel and concrete, is important for engineers who design bridges and structures.

Create giant bubbles! Bubbles are fascinating. What gives them their shape? What makes them break or last? What causes the colors and patterns in the soap film, and why do they change?

Students learn about the types of possible loads, how to calculate ultimate load combinations, and investigate the different sizes for the beams (girders) and columns (piers) of simple bridge design. Students learn the steps that engineers use to design bridges: understanding the problem, determining the potential bridge loads, calculating the highest possible load, and calculating the amount of material needed to resist the loads.

In this activity, students squeeze a tennis ball to demonstrate the strength of the human heart. Working in teams, they think of ways to keep the heart beating if the natural mechanism were to fail. The goal of this activity is to get students to understand the strength and resilience of the heart.

Engineers create and use new materials, as well as new combinations of existing materials to design innovative new products and technologies—all based upon the chemical and physical properties of given substances. In this activity, students act as materials engineers as they learn about and use chemical and physical properties including tessellated geometric designs and shape to build better smartphone cases. Guided by the steps of the engineering design process, they analyze various materials and substances for their properties, design/test/improve a prototype model, and create a dot plot of their prototype testing results.

The purpose of this class is to offer students a new perspective on the importance of our bodily experience to our cognitive and social lives. The curriculum is designed to foster a working appreciation for how better bodily awareness can positively affect how we feel in our bodies, carry and present ourselves for improved social sensitivity and more successful social interactions.

Students take a hands-on look at the design of bridge piers (columns). First they brainstorm types of loads that might affect a Colorado bridge. Then they determine the maximum possible load for that scenario, and calculate the cross-sectional area of a column designed to support that load. Choosing from clay, foam or marshmallows, they create model columns and test their calculations.

Student teams build model hand dynamometers used to measure grip strengths of people recovering from sports injuries. They use their models to measure how much force their classmates muscles are capable of producing, and analyze the data to determine factors that influence a person's grip strength. They use this information to produce a recommendation of a hand dynamometer design for a medical office specializing in physical therapy. They also consider the many other ways grip strength data is used by engineers to design everyday products.

The main objective of 1.054/1.541 is to provide students with a rational basis of the design of reinforced concrete members and structures through advanced understanding of material and structural behavior. This course is offered to undergraduate (1.054) and graduate students (1.541). Topics covered include: Strength and Deformation of Concrete under Various States of Stress; Failure Criteria; Concrete Plasticity; Fracture Mechanics Concepts; Fundamental Behavior of Reinforced Concrete Structural Systems and their Members; Basis for Design and Code Constraints; High-performance Concrete Materials and their use in Innovative Design Solutions; Slabs: Yield Line Theory; Behavior Models and Nonlinear Analysis; and Complex Systems: Bridge Structures, Concrete Shells, and Containments.
Professor Oral Buyukozturk thanks Tzu-Yang Yu, a graduate student at MIT, for his valuable assistance in preparing course documents.

This course provides Mechanical Engineering students with an awareness of various responses exhibited by solid engineering materials when subjected to mechanical and thermal loadings; an introduction to the physical mechanisms associated with design-limiting behavior of engineering materials, especially stiffness, strength, toughness, and durability; an understanding of basic mechanical properties of engineering materials, testing procedures used to quantify these properties, and ways in which these properties characterize material response; quantitative skills to deal with materials-limiting problems in engineering design; and a basis for materials selection in mechanical design.

The central point of this course is to provide a physical basis that links the structure of materials with their properties, focusing primarily on metals. With this understanding in hand, the concepts of alloy design and microstructural engineering are also discussed, linking processing and thermodynamics to the structure and properties of metals.

Students take a close look at truss structures, the geometric shapes that compose them, and the many variations seen in bridge designs in use every day. Through a guided worksheet, students draw assorted 2D and 3D polygon shapes and think through their forms and interior angles (mental “testing”) before and after load conditions are applied. They see how engineers add structural members to polygon shapes to support them under compression and tension, and how triangles provide the strongest elemental shape. A PowerPoint® presentation is provided. This lesson prepares students for two associated activities that continue the series on polygons and trusses.

Student teams investigate biomedical engineering and the technology of prosthetics. Students create a model prosthetic lower leg using various materials. Each team demonstrate its prosthesis' strength and consider its pros and cons, giving insight into the characteristics and materials biomedical engineers consider in designing artificial limbs.