Project laboratory

Lectures: 1 session / week, 3 hours / session

This course will provide experience in formulating, solving, and presenting solutions to engineering problems.

It is anticipated that all written reports in a group will have data, calculations and figures which are similar, but will have separately written texts. If for any reason some figures, tables, appendices or other material are copied and shared among the group, such materials should be initialed by the person who prepared the original. We want each of you to have the experience that accompanies writing a report but do not expect you to have different experimental results when you've run the same experiment. In general, each report should have enough detail so that the reader can reproduce your results. (See Section 3: Guide to 2.672 Report Writing.) In the last week of the first experiment, one hour will be spent in a brief workshop on report writing.

The results from your final experiment will be presented in an oral presentation by your group collectively. Oral presentations are an important part of communicating your results, so it should be a valuable experience. (See Section 4: Guide to 2.672 Oral Presentations.)

There will be 3 experiments. An independently written report by each student is required for the first two; an oral presentation by the group as a whole is required for the third experiment.

A letter grade (with pluses and minuses) will be given to each report. The final grade, however, is computed by assigning a number to each letter grade, and the following weighting is used.

To encourage using the laboratory as learning environment, substantial weighting is assigned to the lab performance which is subjectively graded. It should be noted that much of this grade is based on the communication between you and your instructor in class. You should use the interaction to demonstrate your knowledge of the subject matter.

Late reports will be down graded. The downgrading is progressive as a function of the days past due. The grade discount is at the discretion of the instructor who will be grading the reports.

For the first two written reports, the grading will be based half on technical content and half on how well do you communicate in writing.

The calendar table illustrates the number of sessions devoted to each lab, and the due dates. See the labs section for detailed information about each lab. Each lab group completes three out of seven possible experiments in a semester. The experiments involve different branches of Mechanical Engineering knowledge, so we try to assign the students for maximum exposure to heat transfer, dynamics, thermo, fluid mechanics, etc.

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