It is also essential to provide opportunities for students to extend their new knowledge beyond the limits of specific design projects. In this workshop, there is particular interest in the situation in which students are asked to learn a discipline, other than design. My experience teaching university-level mechanical engineering design and high school physics provide the foundation for the following discussion. The principles can be extrapolated for learning other material. As requested in the call for papers, special attention is given to software tools to support this type of learning and teaching.
Different content is more appropriate in different parts of a design timeline.
A place which it is convenient to introduce an overview of physical principles is in the Conceptual Design Phase. Here the functional requirements for the product have been identified and there is a search for Solution Principles, i.e., possible ways of accomplishing the required functions. In other words, function has been determined and a designer searches for principles to accomplish the desired behavior. Alternative concepts are proposed to satisfy the customer's functional requirements. For example, if motion of a vehicle is required, it would be an ideal time to discuss the principles of momentum transfer, application of forces, springs and oscillatory motion, potential energy, kinetic energy, etc.