Dataset Information

Introducing Engineering Design and Materials Science at an Earlier Age through Ceramic Cold Casting.

ABSTRACT: Elementary and middle school science curriculums typically focus on generating an interest in science and engineering through the use of hands-on activities that demonstrate specific concepts. Laboratory activities designed in this manner often circumvent some of the main challenges that engineers and scientists face, namely balancing advantages and disadvantages for a variety of potential solutions to solve a specific problem. This activity was designed to show students that different solutions for a given problem can exist, and engineers must manage priorities when choosing the best solution. This laboratory involves cold casting ceramics slurries with varying viscosities into a mold. The resulting casts have a varying final density, controlled by the initial viscosity. Students are presented with different outcome measures regarding the objects they cast: ease of manufacturing, cost, aesthetics, and mechanical properties. Based on the laboratory design, no single cast will perform the best in any of these categories. The students are then asked to choose the best mold, and justify their answers based on the initial problem presented to them by balancing which outcome measures they consider to be important for solving this specific problem. This laboratory teaches basic science concepts like viscosity and density, while addressing common industrial manufacturing issues, such as cost and ease of manufacturing. Through a combination of these features, this laboratory introduces engineering and design concepts using the scientific method to students at an earlier age.

SUBMITTER: Boys AJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6521834 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Introducing Engineering Design and Materials Science at an Earlier Age through Ceramic Cold Casting.

Boys Alexander J AJ Walsh Mark C MC

Journal of chemical education 20181127 1

Elementary and middle school science curriculums typically focus on generating an interest in science and engineering through the use of hands-on activities that demonstrate specific concepts. Laboratory activities designed in this manner often circumvent some of the main challenges that engineers and scientists face, namely balancing advantages and disadvantages for a variety of potential solutions to solve a specific problem. This activity was designed to show students that different solutions ...[more]

PMID: 31105331

Similar Datasets

Project description:Open research data practices are a relatively new, thus still evolving part of scientific work, and their usage varies strongly within different scientific domains. In the literature, the investigation of open research data practices covers the whole range of big empirical studies covering multiple scientific domains to smaller, in depth studies analysing a single field of research. Despite the richness of literature on this topic, there is still a lack of knowledge on the (open) research data awareness and practices in materials science and engineering. While most current studies focus only on some aspects of open research data practices, we aim for a comprehensive understanding of all practices with respect to the considered scientific domain. Hence this study aims at 1) drawing the whole picture of search, reuse and sharing of research data 2) while focusing on materials science and engineering. The chosen approach allows to explore the connections between different aspects of open research data practices, e.g. between data sharing and data search. In depth interviews with 13 researchers in this field were conducted, transcribed verbatim, coded and analysed using content analysis. The main findings characterised research data in materials science and engineering as extremely diverse, often generated for a very specific research focus and needing a precise description of the data and the complete generation process for possible reuse. Results on research data search and reuse showed that the interviewees intended to reuse data but were mostly unfamiliar with (yet interested in) modern methods as dataset search engines, data journals or searching public repositories. Current research data sharing is not open, but bilaterally and usually encouraged by supervisors or employers. Project funding does affect data sharing in two ways: some researchers argue to share their data openly due to their funding agency's policy, while others face legal restrictions for sharing as their projects are partly funded by industry. The time needed for a precise description of the data and their generation process is named as biggest obstacle for data sharing. From these findings, a precise set of actions is derived suitable to support Open Data, involving training for researchers and introducing rewards for data sharing on the level of universities and funding bodies.

Dataset Information

Introducing Engineering Design and Materials Science at an Earlier Age through Ceramic Cold Casting.

Publications

Introducing Engineering Design and Materials Science at an Earlier Age through Ceramic Cold Casting.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets