2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Many engineering technology courses incorporate hands-on experiences to build intuition of fundamental topics and industry-relevant skills. A project was developed to enable the application of thermodynamic principles in a sophomore-level Instrumentation and Control Systems Engineering Technology (ICET) course. Each student taking the course purchased a low-cost kit that included a thermoelectric element, a heat sink, a fan, a 3D-printed flume, and supporting parts. Students assembled an Arduino-controlled thermoelectric heating and cooling system from the parts provided in their kit. Thermodynamics content in the course was woven around the project. Students measured temperatures, air flowrates, mass, electrical current, and voltage as they accounted for energy inputs and outputs of the system. The content was designed to build competency in fundamental topics through small projects with their systems, leading to a broader system analysis. The project’s primary goal was to provide context for first-law concepts while building usable industry-relevant skills.

An end-of-course survey was also given to provide insights on the extent to which project elements reinforced targeted thermodynamics concepts. This paper will describe the project in detail, discuss the implementation of the project in the course, and provide an analysis of the project’s impact on student learning of fundamental topics throughout the course.