The laboratory provides hands-on experience working with various types of instrumentation and electrical components. Topics include DC and AC circuits, electronic filters, power supplies, function generators, microprocessor boards, analog and digital signals, sensors, Wheatstone bridges, AC-to-DC power conversion, real-time measurement of time response, LabVIEW programming, and motors. Concurrent/prerequisite enrollment with ME 345.
The laboratory provides hands-on experience working with various types of instrumentation and electrical components. Topics include DC and AC circuits, electronic filters, power supplies, function generators, microprocessor boards, analog and digital signals, sensors, Wheatstone bridges, AC-to-DC power conversion, real-time measurement of time response, LabVIEW programming, and motors. Concurrent/prerequisite enrollment with ME 345.
The lab manual can be found here. Do not print it all at once, since the lab exercises are still evolving and being updated.
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The following schedule is tentative.
| week | topics introduced |
|---|---|
| Syllabus and forming groups | |
| Lab 01: introduction, report writing, equipment | |
| Lab 02: voltage, current, and resistance measurements; function generators; multimeters; oscilloscopes | |
| no lab | |
| Lab 03: RC circuit response | |
| Lab 04: RLC circuit response | no lab |
| Lab 05: AC to DC conversion diode full wave bridge rectifier | |
| Lab 06: 555 timer and soldering | |
| no lab | |
| Lab 07: thermal response | |
| no lab | |
| no lab (Thanksgiving) | |
| Lab 08: brushed DC motors | |
| no lab (study week) | |
| finals week, no lab, last report due Wed |
| Day | Date | Topics | Reading | Due |
|---|
Class resources will be posted here throughout the semester.
Some texts you may find useful throughout the course:
Some writing resources:
A laboratory report will be due the day before the next laboratory exercise. These laboratories will be submitted via Moodle and must be formatted with the LaTeX template provided on Overleaf here (select "Clone this project" to get started). Overleaf allows you and your group to collaborate on the report. Review the LaTeX tutorial in the lab manual for more details.
Laboratory procedures should be performed in the assigned groups, and these groups should submit a single report. The report must be the product of every member of the group, and there must be a section of the report that describes each team member's contribution.
Total grades in the course may be curved, but individual laboratory reports will not be. Grades will be available on moodle throughout the semester.
Laboratory reports 100%
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The laboratory report grade will be based on laboratory exercise execution, theoretical analysis, presentation of data and analysis, and writing. The following breakdown is used.
Overall quality of the execution of the laboratory exercise is considered. Are your results reasonable? Did you describe the proper steps? Do you demonstrate an understanding of the experiment and results?
Also considered is a theoretical analysis to predict experimental results. This should be performed in virtually all lab exercises. Do you thoroughly describe your analysis? Are there enough equations included to follow your reasoning? Are your predictions correct?
Another consideration is the quality of your overall presentation in the report. This includes your figures (e.g. good scaling of axes, size, clarity, etc.), captions (e.g. can a table or figure be understood without reading the body of the text?), equations (e.g. are they nicely formatted?), etc.
A significant portion of your grade depends on writing quality. This includes overall narrative flow of the document, grammar, clarity, and style. This is taken very seriously because it doesn't matter how great your design, analysis, or experiment is—if you can't communicate your results effectively, nobody cares.
The weight of your grade depending on report writing is significant. I strongly encourage you to go to the Writing Center early-on to get help with this. I will also be available for help during office hours.
I recognize that, for many students, writing is a significant challenge. In order to foster the development of your writing skills, for each appointment (up to two) with a Peer Reader in the Writing Center, your grade on the relevant report can increase by as much as 10 percentage points. That is, up to 20 of the total 30 percentage points on each assignment can be granted by thorough engagement with Peer Readers on two occasions for the relevant lab report. (Note that the 10 points is not guaranteed—your feedback from the Peer Reader must demonstrate thorough engagement.) In this way, you get credit for working hard to improve your writing.
A note on Peer Reader visits: exactly two group members must go to each session. You must rotate through each member of your group, equally, to get credit. (An audit will be performed at the end of the term, so even if you have received credit, it can be taken away if members do not rotate.)
Everyone is required to join the messaging service called "Slack." We'll use it to communicate with each other during the semester. The Slack team you need to join is called meee316. That's a signup link. Be sure to join the channels #labs and #latex.
In keeping with the standards of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, each course is evaluated in terms of its desired outcomes and how these support the desired program outcomes. The following sections document the evaluation of this course.
The desired program outcomes are that mechanical engineering graduates have:
The following table correlates the desired course outcomes with the desired program outcomes they support.
| desired program outcomes | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | ||
| desired course outcomes | 1 | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | | | | ✔ | ✔ |
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | | | | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | | | | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | ✔ | | | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | | | | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | | | | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | | | | | ✔ | ✔ | ||
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