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John Lof Leadership Academy Visits Joule Fellow Jennifer Andrews

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Run by graduate students from various departments within the University of Connecticut School of Engineering, the John Lof Leadership Academy aims to train its members to become leaders in their fields. The Academy provides training and workshops focused on leadership through the lens of the individual member’s career and personal goals.  Through that training, Academy members focus their time on honing their skills through practice, which is done through collaboration and outreach.

As part of that goal rooted in outreach, the Lof Scholars visited Illing Middle School in Manchester, Connecticut on March 25. The Lof scholars spent the day talking about UConn and our engineering programs and sparked students towards the field of engineering through the use of fun, active learning.

Throughout the day, the Lof Scholars worked with over 150 students. Students learned how to make water filtration apparatuses, they studied biomechanics using a human skeleton and learned about electromagnetics, which introduced them to the fields biomedical, electrical, environmental, civil, chemical, and mechanical engineering. The Lof scholars found the opportunity very rewarding as they were able to bring their research to kids in a fun and interesting way.

 

Program Reflection

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October 4, 2018

 Joule Fellow: Diane Walsh

I had six different stations around the room.  In my smaller class, I had groups of two and three students.  In my larger classes, I had six groups of four students.  The six stations are:
  1. Force sensor station with the decalcified chicken bones where students measured the force applied (and took a picture with each compression).
  2. 3-point bend test station where students used given data to create a mathematical model (piecewise-defined function) for the data using Desmos.
  3. Shin guard station where students brainstormed ideas to build a shin guard and decided who would be what materials to school next week to build the shin guard.
  4. Young’s Modulus station where students solved word problems related to YM, stress, and strain.
  5. Stereognosis station where students sorted foam samples by stiffness, first by touch only and then using sight.  They also watched a short video about Science of Materials.
  6. Candy-Matching station where students pulled apart a Kit Kat, Milky Way, marshmallow, and gummy worm and matched the candy name to the corresponding stress-strain graph.  They also watched a short video with examples of this activity using similar British candy.
  7. (next class)  I have five laptops available for students to analyze the force sensor images using ImageJ to determine the displacement of the sample under compression.
Lesson pics 1
  1. Students are compressing a de-calcified chicken bone section using a force sensor and collecting force-displacement data.
  2. Same but with a piece of foam inside the core.
  3. Students pull apart candy and match the stress-strain graphs to the corresponding candy name.  In this picture, a student is stretching a marshmallow.
  4. A student is sorting foam samples (some are plain, others with a cutout, and others are composite samples) by touch only from softest to stiffest.
Lesson pics 2
  1. A student is sorting foam samples while being able to see the samples and comparing the results to the ones gathered using touch only.
  2. A student is using a rubber mallet and a leather punch tool to make a sponge core for a chicken bone composite sample.
  3. Hints for the station where students were solving Young’s Modulus, stress, and strain word problems.
Lesson pics 3
  1. Same as described in the first set.
  2. Students are using Desmos to analyze force-displacement data of a 3-point bend test on a chicken bone.  Students were given the data.  They are modeling the data using a piecewise-defined function with a linear component at the start and are running the regression to determine if the ductile region is best modeled by a quadratic or a cubic function.
  3. Students are using ImageJ to analyze the data collected from the force sensor on the decalcified chicken bones.