on any given day particularly during the peak hours of another busy fall semester the 35 000-square-foot shell engineering foundations laboratory is a blur of activity with machines humming and whirring over the din of student chatter as their mechanical arms chart patterns if not the career courses for thousands of future aggie engineers and scientists the laboratory located on the third floor of texas a&m universitys zachry engineering education complex is a tangible example of the transformational difference a little teamwork and aggie ingenuity can make in improving fundamental education delivery by focusing on an old-fashioned time-honored concept experience the more realistic and hands-on the better a team of texas a&m students discusses their current project you say you want a revolution three years ago zachry wasnt the only bold renovation project underway on the texas a&m campus at the time a simultaneous one began as a collaboration between faculty in the colleges of science and the engineering to revamp required engineering courses including classical mechanics engineering calculus and chemistry for engineers last fall that joint effort resulted in the campus-wide debut of an entirely new engineering physics sequence featuring not only a new set of laboratories for introductory physics service courses but also a novel method of delivery: state-of-the-art laboratory stations custom-made to revolutionize the learning experience a student contemplates his next step while working at one of the laboratorys 60 stations designed by a team of physicists from the department of physics and astronomy under the direction of professor ricardo eusebi each specialized work unit is equipped with tools and high-tech interactive features enabling students to put complex physics concepts to practice and generate detailed electronic reports the idea eusebi says is to foster a learning-by-doing experience to date 60 of the lab stations have been installed within the shell laboratory where they are used by students taking two new cross-listed courses: phys/engr 216 mechanics or phys/engr 217 electricity and magnetism we want them to have an experimental understanding as opposed to just a theoretical understanding eusebi said were no longer asking students to believe and trust what were telling them now were asking them to prove it experimentally tables for 3 000 the stations consist of a high-lift four-by-four-foot air table that provide a low-friction surface at first glance they resemble air hockey tables and with students huddled around gliding brightly colored pucks back and forth it would be easy to mistake whats going on for a rousing bout of the popular game in actuality the students are analyzing detailed information on the position velocity and acceleration of the pucks another student adjusts a track point as part of an experiment designed to measure voltage each puck is covered in strategically placed stickers and cameras mounted over the tables use a special tracking software to record their frame-by-frame coordinates which students then can track on monitors in real time students can also alter the slope of the table or strategically arrange collisions and use the information to make assessments about the dynamics of projectile motion under various conditions in addition a computer numerical control (cnc) feature modulates an armature that can be fitted with various instruments such as voltage probes which can then scan sensors on the table and take voltage readings as a function of position the thing that really tells you how well these labs are going are the reports that the students make eusebi said those reports are beautiful they show you the amount of information these devices produce not only do the students get to take the data by themselves they get to analyze it in a way that couldnt be done in the old labs committee for change eusebi was a member of the joint science-engineering committee charged in fall 2016 with merging the engr 111/112 classes and the phys 208/218 laboratories to create joint physics and engineering courses faculty from both disciplines as well as chemistry and mathematics met regularly for nearly a year to determine what improvements could be made to the curriculum beyond restructuring the course material eusebi says they wanted to completely change the way it was taught thus the idea for a one-of-a-kind experimental learning facility was set in motion it was an opportunity for us to do some research to figure out how the new labs should be designed without any restraint on what the technology was or what devices were available eusebi said we wanted to start completely from scratch and think of the best most ideal lab we could have we did that with a completely open mind professor john mason john mason an instructional assistant professor of physics who earned his phd in physics from texas a&m in 2016 was one of the researchers recruited by eusebi early on to help with the development of the tables and oversee their implementation into the new courses we sat down and took a hard introspective look at our labs that we had and we said ‘we can do this better mason said we wanted to come up with a curriculum that wasnt cookie-cutter to what other colleges are doing we wanted our students to really think and we wanted to improve on the educational experience here at texas a&m that was our goal and i think that weve met that goal mason says the entire process from conceptualization to installation took nearly two years but efforts to improve upon the functional and technological capabilities of the tables will remain on-going a lot of the equipment is custom-made he said it took a long time to get this project off the ground and were still growing we consider it a work in progress well never be done making them better conducive to collaboration laboratory manager alexander yeagle makes adjustments to one of the stations which are custom-designed and branded for texas a&m via each information panel (below)texas a&m custom-built visualization studio eusebi estimates the tables are used by approximately 3 000 physics and engineering majors per week making the shell engineering foundations laboratory one of the largest student-serving experimental facilities on campus as one of the most recent improvements 2011 cornell university physics graduate alexander yeagle was hired in june as a laboratory manager to oversee the research space i think the big advantage of these new labs that we have here is it gets people exposure with tools they might actually use yeagle said youre getting a lot of exposure with data acquisition visual tracking and odometry using the cameras and cnc which are all things used in industry because the lab tables are specifically designed to be conducive to collaboration allowing students to electronically share data between machines with their peers yeagle says students get to experience a more accurate representation of how research is actually conducted science research as its done today changes quite a bit yeagle said the days where its somebody by themselves sitting in a lab has kind of passed a lot of what happens now is collaborative work and it also includes software and computer work getting used to that would help people understand how research is done nowadays more than the way it used to be done which is still whats taught in a lot of places expanding the experience hands-on experiential learning is a hallmark of the shell engineering foundations laboratory one of the largest student-serving experimental facilities on the entire texas a&m campus engineering programs at other campuses in the texas a&m university system including texas a&ms branch campuses at galveston qatar and mcallen already are embracing the technology and have implemented the new tables into their curriculum the tables also are in use in all engineering academies throughout the state and in community colleges in houston dallas san antonio austin brownsville and brenham thus far 114 total units have been deployed last fall eusebi filed a patent on behalf of his team of graduate students and physicists who helped design and construct the tables in addition there is a company that has entered into an exclusive license with the texas a&m system to eventually sell them commercially building these tables turned into a much bigger job than we originally thought but a large number of colleges in texas are using these machines and following texas a&ms lead eusebi said professor ricardo eusebi eusebi is no stranger to such enterprising group projects having previously mentored a six-member student team led by physics graduate student andrea delgado 12 that designed and built texas a&ms tesla coil housed in the basement of the george p mitchell 40 physics building that since has become one of the most popular attractions for aspiring scientists and engineers of all ages at the annual texas a&m physics and engineering festival set for april 4 2020 to learn more about physics teaching labs visit https://physicstamuedu/academics/labs/ for more information about eusebi and his teaching research and service go to https://physicstamuedu/directory/ricardo-eusebi/ -atm- contact: chris jarvis (979) 845-7246 or cjarvis@sciencetamuedu or prof ricardo eusebi (979) 458-7907 or eusebi@tamuedu the post texas a&m physics turns tables on traditional engineering education with custom-designed patent-pending laboratory stations appeared first on college of science share: