The Junior Laboratory: A Place to Introduce Basics as Well as New Findings
- PDF / 607,141 Bytes
- 6 Pages / 612 x 792 pts (letter) Page_size
- 3 Downloads / 138 Views
JJ4.5.1
THE JUNIOR LABORATORY: A PLACE TO INTRODUCE BASICS AS WELL AS NEW FINDINGS Luz J. Martínez-Miranda, O. C. Wilson, Jr. and L. G Salamanca-Riba, Dept. of Materials and Nuclear Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-2115
ABSTRACT
Since its establishment in 1997, the undergraduate program at the University of Maryland has successfully established laboratories where new findings are introduced and used to teach the basic concepts and basic experimental methods in Materials Science and Engineering. This presents the challenge of changing the materials, keeping in mind that the students are being introduced for the first time to many of the concepts. In the junior laboratory of materials, we have successfully changed three laboratories (optical microscopy, rectifying components and X-ray) and a demonstration (TEM) in order to introduce nanomaterials and biomaterials. These laboratories show that currently used techniques can aid in studying the new developments in materials and that most, if not all, the basic concepts can be applied in studying them. They also help the students look at the effects of the structure – processing – properties relationship that is basic to Materials Science and Engineering. We relate all laboratories to experiments and studies currently happening in materials science, even if we have not had the opportunity or the facilities to change it. The laboratory has been approved by ABET 2000.
INTRODUCTION The Materials and Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of Maryland undergraduate Materials program was approved in 1996. As part of the program, we developed a year-long laboratory sequence intended to complement an already existing laboratory in mechanical properties of materials (ENMA 362), as well as the advanced class in physical properties of materials (ENMA 460). We have taken the opportunity to create a laboratory where we can show the students results of recent research and relate them to the basics that they learn in the classes and the basic laboratory techniques that they learn in the laboratory class itself [1]. This laboratory, ENMA 310-311, taken by junior level students in the materials department, was approved by ABET 2000 for six years in 1999, just as we have described above. We needed to answer how easy it was to change the laboratory projects so that they would still cover the necessary basic techniques but the students also got exposed to recent results [1]. We do not know the answer as to whether it will become more difficult to do this as time passes and the program gets more established. The changes were able to be done in a quick manner thanks to our research program, and the interest of faculty from all areas in materials science in having the course be one which is alive for today’s student, and outside collaborators who are interested in what their future
JJ4.5.2
materials scientists employees learn. In the next paragraphs, we show three examples of where this has happened and discuss a fourth experiment where part of the in
Data Loading...
