2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

“Let’s find out!”

In one of my Mechanical Behavior of Materials classes, I showed a bimetallic strip and asked how to predict quantitatively the deformation as a function of temperature. I expected students to talk about the types of metals and dimensions of the strip. But one student asked what material held the two strips together. That question was likely motivated by our previous module on thermal stresses and choice of the materials in ceramic-metal brazed assemblies. In class, instead of answering, I decided to let the students find out the answers on their own. I said: “Let’s find out!” The question was written on the board and became the first in the list to be populated by a question from each student in the class. Luckily, the students asked many questions, so I could select those suitable for what followed. Each question motivated an individual experimental micro-project. The reports for these microprojects and respective presentations with demos given by students became the final exam for the class.
The approach of “Let’s find out” was clearly driven by curiosity of students. At the same time, as an instructor, selecting which questions to include, I thought about their potential educational value, availability of the equipment and resources to conduct hands-on activities, and feasibility of preparing a demo for the final presentation. The goals of those micro-projects had to be realistic to be completed in 3 weeks. I also wanted to include materials characterization techniques or equipment that was not used during the already planned laboratory experiments.
I will review three individual question-driven projects from Spring 2024. These came about from the following course topics: thermal expansion, deformation of polymers, and mechanical properties of composites. I will share the common structure and requirements for the projects.
An apparent limitation of this approach is a small class size. In a larger class, this approach might expand into group projects. In my small class, it created a dynamic environment, motivated the students to ask more questions, and develop new experiments and demos for their peers. The students were engaged and took ownership to their projects because the topics emerged from their own questions.