engr 096 professor martinez. course syllabus name game lecture #1 distance measurements lab

ENGR 096Professor Martinez

Course Syllabus

Name Game

Lecture #1

Distance Measurements Lab

Goal: Everybody will know each other’s name by the

end of the third week Purpose: academic, social, psychological support

Groups of two or three Each student introduces themselves (name,

major, hometown, and favorite hobby) Identify at least three things that you have in

common with your new “buddy” What’s the most important engineering

invention?? Report back to the class

Engineering and engineers exist everywhere From buildings to iPods, automobiles to High

Definition Televisions, engineering is an integral part of our daily lives

Some critics argue that engineering has made our society lazy, uncommunicative, and less personal

On the contrary, I argue that engineering breeds innovation and that engineers have made our society more efficient and more open to technological advances

Communication We can send instant messages/video/photos via

cellular phones, email, internet. This has rapidly enhanced our ability to communicate

with each other Space Exploration

NASA is landing larger and heavier robots on the surface of Mars to search for signs of extraterrestrial life

Astronauts are performing medical tests on the effects of zero gravity on the human body to eventually determine whether humans can one day live outside earth’s atmosphere

These famous people actually studied to be an engineer:

Neil Armstrong, aeronautical engineering Claim to fame: First man on the moon, of

course!

Jimmy Carter, Mechanical Engineering 39th President of United States

Leonardo Da Vinci, Mechanical Engineering Painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper Designed a flying machine

Mona Lisa

Last Supper

FlyingMachine

Montel Williams, Naval Engineering Host of the day-time talk show, The Montel

Williams Show

Ellen Ochoa, Electrical Engineering Native of San Diego, CA. 1st Hispanic

woman in space. Went to space aboard Discovery in 1993.

Ashton Kutcher, Biochemical Engineering

Attended the University of Iowa Dropped out to pursue modeling

(Bad move, dude)

A couple of points to be made Engineering is a wide field of study with lots

of options With hard work and persistence, ANYBODY

can become an engineer Engineering provides an excellent starting

point for future careers Presidents, astronauts, lawyers, doctors,

business people have started as engineers Talk show host may be a little far-fetched, but

anything is possible!! The majority of engineering students actually go

on to become actual engineers (duh!)

Let’s talk about how engineering is relevant to our daily lives A great source of engineering information that

is readily accessible is the news Engineering disasters, new technological

gadgets, new buildings are all newsworthy because they cost on the order of millions of dollars

Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, much of the money for new building projects and disaster repair in our state comes from taxpayer dollars.

2008 Summer Olympic Games (Beijing, China) Advances in pool design and swimsuit technology have contributed

to the increases in speed for swimmers. The corset-like Speedo LZR Racer suit is made by ultrasonic welding

instead of stitching and can require a half-hour to put on and shoehorns the body into a more streamlined position

The Beijing pool eliminates wave action against swimmers by being deeper, wider, and uses a sophisticated outside lane buffer system.

The Great Sichaun Earthquake(May 12, 2008) Magnitude 8.0 earthquake left more than 50,000 people

dead

What is an 8.0 earthquake? Richter Scale magnitude 8.0 earthquake is equivalent to 33 times

the force of the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki during WWII

How many people is 50,000? Los Angeles Coliseum holds 92,516 people Imagine going to a USC football game and just under half the

people in attendance are allowed to go home. I think I’ll watch the game at home!!

Would the same thing happen if Los Angeles experienced an 8.0 earthquake? Probably not, since the Chinese earthquake occurred in rural

China where buildings and structures were not built to withstand such an earthquake (and possibly built without earthquakes in mind!)

Buildings and infrastructure in the Los Angeles area have to meet strict building codes or the builders face serious fines and penalties. There will more than likely be less damage if an 8.0 earthquake hit the Los Angeles region.

New technology to ease traffic woes One concept is to gather information about vehicle speeds

and traffic levels from drivers' GPS-enabled cellphones. The Mobile Millennium project blends encrypted location data with traffic information from other sources before broadcasting the resulting travel information back to users' phones. (UC Berkeley)

Yucca Mountain safety plan doomed Yucca Mountain, Nevada is the proposed storage location for

all of the nuclear waste produced by U.S. nuclear power plants.

In an earthquake, casks of radioactive waste could bounce and roll in a 'chaotic melee,' Holtec International says of the Energy Department proposal. (Los Angeles Times)

Supercomputer performs 1,000 trillion calculations a second Scientists unveiled the world's fastest supercomputer on

Monday, a $100 million machine that for the first time has performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise. (USA Today)

Space Shuttle Endeavour lifted off Cape Canaveral, Florida on Aug. 8, 2007 to continue space station construction by delivering a third starboard truss segment.

During take-off, foam loss from the liquid oxygen feedline brackets on the external tank during launch caused thermal tile damage to Endeavour.

Space shuttle Endeavour is safe to fly home as is

Space Shuttle Endeavour glided to a perfect landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on August 21, 2007.

The iPhone has arrived!! (8GB Retail price = $599)

The iPhone gets hacked by teenager!! A New Jersey teenager has figured out how to make

Apple's iPhone available on other wireless services besides AT&T, removing a major frustration for thousands of consumers.

George Hotz, SUPERBAD!!

The Interstate-35 bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota collapses. Official death toll is 13 with over 100 injured.

U.S. highway bridges are, on average, 40 years old. The typical interstate bridge was built in the late 1960s (the I-35 bridge was finished in 1967).

Most bridges are inspected and rated every two years.

In 2005, engineers rated the I-35 bridge in Minnesota as "structurally deficient" and possibly in need of replacement.

Overall, about 20 percent of interstate bridges (nearly 12,000 bridges) were rated as deficient in one way or another in 2004.

The $100 laptop: for use in developing countries Engineers scaled down the common laptop and

focused on features that developing nations need (internet, word processing, video call)

If everything worked perfectly, we wouldn’t need engineers

Engineering is mainly about improving current designs and functions to make things more efficient, useful, cheaper, and safer.

Me

Extra Credit

Have you seen these people before??

What are they doing? Why?

How do engineers measure short distances?

How do engineers measure long distances?

Pythagorean Theorem & Creativity

In groups of two or three, use a yardstick to find the distance from one corner of the classroom to the opposite diagonal corner in feet.

Use Pythagorean Theorem

Read Chapter 1: Historical Beginnings of Engineering

Discussion on Ch. 1 next Monday