Mihai Pruna, Ph.D. (1st year) Mechanical&Aerospace Engineering
Summary: Each group of students will construct a test rig for measuring the RPM (Revolutions per Minute) of a model aircraft (scaled) propeller. The test rig consists of a LEGO NXT Brick, NXT Motor and NXT Light sensor. The propeller is mounted on the motor and the students will measure the time elapsed between propeller blades passing over the light sensor. Two or three bladed propellers can be used.
Mihai Pruna, Ph.D. (1st year) Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering
Summary: Students analyze the relationship between wheel radius, linear velocity and angular velocity by using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® EV3 robots. Given various robots with different wheel sizes and fixed motor speeds, they predict which has the fastest linear velocity. Then student teams collect and graph data to analyze the relationships between wheel size and linear velocity and find the angular velocity of the robot given its motor speed. Students explore other ways to increase linear velocity by changing motor speeds, and discuss and evaluate the optimal wheel size and desired linear velocities on vehicles.
Damion Irving, Ph.D. (4th. year) Chemical and Biological Engineering
Summary: This activity introduces students to visible light spectroscopy and chemical kinetics. In spectroscopy light is used to characterize a liquid solution or suspension. The idea is that the intensity of light that enters a liquid is lowered as the light energy excites species, thus the lights is emitted at a lower intensity. As shown in Figure 1, the idea of the anatomy of a sensor can be used to explain the operation of a visible light spectrophotometer. The following mnemonic is used: Sensors = Stimulus + Transducer + Signal (STS). Here it is clear that, a sensor is a device that detects an external stimulus, and changes that stimulus to a detectable signal, by means of a transducer. For our device, light intensity (the stimulus) is detected, the semi-conductor material responds by becoming a conductor of electricity (transducer), and the resulting current flow is the sensor response (signal). The end goal is to design a crude visible light spectrophotometer (vis-spec) or more correctly a colorimeter using the NXT brick, and two NXT light sensors. One sensor is used in the light active mode as a visible polychromatic light source (LED), and the other is used in the light inactive mode as a detector (via a phototransistor). This process is repeated for a reference solution, and a ratio of intensities is calculated, that relates directly to amount of substance in the liquid.
Complete Activity (pdf) | Worksheet (pdf)
Zachary Nishino, M.S. (1st. year) Mechanical Engineering
Summary: In this lesson, students will lift multiple objects using a crane incorporating different gear ratios. A fun spin on the project could be basing it off the popular movie trilogy Toy Story (hence, the name of the lesson). Students will be engaged in learning how to operate a toy mechanical crane, while learning about the concept of gear ratios and power. They will be able to experiment picking up objects of different weights to witness how much power they must apply to the system in order to combat the force of gravity.
Teachengineering.org | Complete Activity (pdf)
Pavel Khazron, Ph.D. (5th. year)Electrical Engineering
Summary: Students learn about different ways in which images can be manipulated using computer programs. Using the Processing programming environment, students modify example programs to produce different effects on given images: brightening or darkening an image, cropping sections from images, image rotation, and zooming.
Eduardo Suescun, Ph.D. (1st. year) Civil Engineering
Summary: Underground water, which is the water located under the ground surface, is of vital importance for human beings since it is a natural resource for drinking and irrigation. Underground water also plays an important role in civil engineering. Water flow within an aquifer, land slope, and earth dam is of interest of engineers to develop accurate designs and optimal constructions. To study water flow inside soil mass the coefficient of permeability, k, should be known.
In soils, k is the measurement of water ability to flow through them. In other words is the speed of water flow inside soils such as gravel, sand, silt, clay, or a mix of them. This activity is prepared to introduce the concept of soil permeability as one of the key parameters to study seepage or the steady state flow of water. Students will have the opportunity of measuring permeability of different types of soils, compare results, and conclude the importance of size, voids, and density in permeability response.
Teachengineering.org | Complete Activity (pdf) | Pre Evaluation (pdf) | Post Evaluation (pdf)
Irina Igel, M.S./Ph.D. (2nd. year) Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Summary: Students measure and analyze forces that act on vehicles pulling heavy objects while moving at a constant speed on a frictional surface. They study how the cars interact with their environments through forces, and discover which parameters in the design of the cars and environments could be altered to improve vehicles' pulling power. This LEGO® MINDSTORMS® based activity is geared towards, but not limited to, physics students.
Pavel Khazron, Ph.D. (5th. year) Electrical Engineering
Summary: In this activity, students use the Lego Mindstorms Education kit to build a simple digital image scanner consisting of an NXT Mindstorms intelligent brick and an NXT light sensor. Students create a simple image of their choosing on supplied square ruled paper, and use the scanner to read in their images into a file. Using the Processing programming environment, students process the scanned file and display it on a computer screen.
Pavel Khazron, Ph.D. (5th. year) Electrical Engineering
Summary: Students design, build, and evaluate a spring-powered mouse trap racer. For evaluation, teams equip their racers with an intelligent brick from a Lego Mindstorms Education kit and a Hitechnic acceleration sensor. Acceleration data collected during launch is used to compute velocity and displacement versus time graphs. In the process, students learn about the importance of fitting mathematical models to measurements of physical quantities, reinforce their knowledge of Newtonian mechanics, deal with design compromises, learn about data acquisition and logging, and carry out collaborative assessment of results from all participating teams.
Teachengineering.org | Complete Activity (pdf) | Analysis Worksheet (pdf) | Statistics Worksheet (pdf)
Zachary Nishino, M.S. (1st. year) Mechanical Engineering
Summary: This activity exposes students to the concept of projectile motion. Students are often familiar with projectile motion from life experiences, such as playing sports like basketball or baseball, but they don't always understand the physics involved. This activity is designed to show students that robotics can be used to build a projectile thrower and measure motion using sensors. Students compute distances and velocities using simple kinematic equations and confirm their results through measurements by hand. To apply this concept, students calculate the necessary speed of an object to reach a certain distance. The scenario is based on a group of hikers stranded at the bottom of a cliff. They need food, but the rescuers cannot deliver it themselves. They must devise a way to get the food to the hikers.
Paul Phamduy, Ph.D. (2nd. year) Mechanical Engineering
Summary: Students learn about rotary encoders and discover how they operate through hands-on experimentation. Rotary encoders are applied in tools to determine angle measurements and for translations of angular motion. One common rotary encoder application is in a computer's ball-type mouse—the ball itself is a type of rotary encoder. In this activity, students experiment with two rotary encoders, including one from a computer mouse and one created using a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT kit. They collect data to define and graph the relationship between the motion of the rotary encoder and its output.
Zachary Nishino, M.S. (2nd. year), Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Summary: Students are introduced to the concepts of torque, power, friction and gear ratios. Teams modify two robotic LEGO vehicles by changing their gear ratios, wheel sizes, weight and engine power, while staying within a limit of points to spend on modifications. The robots face each other on a track with a string attaching one to the other. The winning robot, the one with the best adjustments, pulls the other across the line.
Zachary Nishino, M.S. (1st. year) Mechanical Engineering
Summary: This programming activity teaches students the different kinds of turns that a multi-wheel robot can perform. Each group is asked to program their robot to write the name of their team on a piece of paper. The activity emphasizes the difference in path taken along with the required programming for each kind of turn. All programming is done in RobotC language used in Lego Mindstorms NXTs. As a method of explanation, students also encounter geometry concepts used for wheel radii.
Complete Activity (pdf) | Pre Evaluation (pdf) | Post Evaluation (pdf)
Damion Irving, Ph.D. (4th. year) Chemical and Biological Engineering
Summary: This activity aims to introduce to students a photoresistor, which is often used in a light dependent voltage divider circuit. A photoresistor is part of a larger family of devices or sensors known as photodetectors. A photodetector's resistance to electrical current changes when it is exposed to light. Photodetectors are commonly used as light sensitive switches; for examples common streetlights that turn on at dusk employ photoresistor circuits. As depicted in Figure 1, the basic anatomy of a sensor can be used to explain the operation of a photoresistor. The following mnemonic is used: Sensors = Stimulus + Transducer + Signal (STS). That is, a sensor is a device that detects an external stimulus, and it changes that stimulus to a detectable signal, by means of a transducer. For our photoresistor, when light (the stimulus) is detected, the semiconductor material responds by becoming a conductor of electricity (transducer), and the resulting current flow is the sensor response (signal). A photoresistor, which consists of cadmium sulfide, responds to visible light similarly to the human eye, and it can be thought of as an electronic analog of the human eye.
Complete Activity (pdf) | Pre Evaluation (pdf)
Pavel Khazron, Ph.D. (5th. year) Electrical Engineering
Summary: Students will learn about the binary number system computers use to store data, in which numbers are represented as sequences of zeros and ones. Using the Basic Stamp 2 (BS2) microcontroller, students will experiment with Morse code - one of the oldest communication methods still in use today. In the process, students learn about how only two signaling elements - the "dit" and the "dah", or 0 and 1, can be used to encode arbitrarily complex messages. The activity introduces a number of useful commands used to program the BS2 microcontroller, as well as concepts of computer memory, data types, and data transfer for input and output.
Complete Activity (pdf) | Activity Solution (pdf)