LEGO Mindstorms NXT robots are being increasingly used in undergraduate courses, mostly in robotics-related subjects. But other engineering topics, like the ones found in data acquisition, control and real-time subjects, also have difficult concepts that can be well understood only with good lab exercises. Such exercises require physical…

When students complete a lab experiment at home or in a staffed lab on campus, they come to class better able to explain what they have done and why they think the approach is correct, and to provide explanations or questions about any problems they encountered. What is so cool is that the learning experience has all the key aspects of the…

Describes an experiment in which atomic diffusion in a solid is accompanied by a color change. (MLH)

This article presents a study that aimed to determine engineering students' preferred way of learning and to provide additional learning resources to support their methods of learning. The population for this study was drawn from electrical, civil, and mechanical engineering programs at an urban university. Overall, the results of the study…

Describes an experiment that utilizes a Joule-Thomson Demonstrator to show the floating nature of the pinch-point in a heat exchanger. (MLH)

Describes a combustion laboratory facility and experiments for a senior-level (undergraduate) course in mechanical engineering. The experiment reinforces basic thermodynamic concepts and provides many students with their first opportunity to work with a combustion system. (DH)

A Commodore-64 microcomputer was used to develop a system which is useful for a variety of teaching laboratory and real time control applications. Hardware and software requirements and examples of experimental work with the system are provided. (JN)

A required senior-level chemical engineering course at Colorado State University is described. The first nine weeks are devoted to the theory portion of the course, which includes the following topics: LaPlace transformations and time constants, block diagrams, inverse transformations, linearization, frequency response analysis, graphical…

Describes an undergraduate kinetics experiment, including advantages of this particular system, sources of error, and expected results. (MLH)

Describes a system (Apple II microcomputer interfaced to flexible, custom-designed digital hardware) which can provide: (1) Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) computation on real-time data with a video display of spectrum; (2) frequency synthesis experiments using the inverse FFT; and (3) real-time digital filtering experiments. (JN)

Describes a computer communication course (and its associated laboratory) developed for electrical engineering students at the University of Florida. The course teaches seniors and graduate students the theoretical limits that affect the implementation of serial digital communications and surveys the interface standards, data link protocols, and…

Discusses a chemical engineering course which includes laboratory experiments on polymerization, polymer fabrication, and polymer properties. (MLH)

Describes an engineering course that stresses various philosophies and methodologies of experimentation, along with the techniques of experimental synthesis. (MLH)

Describes a set of experiments that uses a low-power gas laser to demonstrate difficult physical and mathematical concepts. (MLH)

Describes an experiment where equal parts of copper and aluminum are heated then cooled to show extremely large crystals. Suggestions are given for changing the orientation of crystals by varying cooling rates. Students are more receptive to concepts of microstructure after seeing this experiment. (DH)