2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Certain concepts in Statics have been traditionally challenging for students to completely grasp and implement them successfully. Lectures and example problems help reinforce and strengthen some of these concepts, however, these problems often primarily address the mathematical framework of the problems and do not foster an intuitive grasp of the underlying concepts. For students to achieve true mastery, it is essential that they develop both the ability to visualize problems and a fundamental understanding of the concepts before approaching their mathematical solutions.
To help facilitate this kind of intuitive learning and understanding, we have developed a series of hands-on lab activities targeting certain important topics in Statics, namely, Moment of Force, Support Reactions and Equilibrium, Free Body Diagrams (FBDs), and Trusses. These activities are specifically designed to help students engage directly with these fundamental concepts, allowing them to better visualize and understand the concepts more clearly.
The Statics course (ENGR 211 – Statics and Introduction to Engineering Mechanics) offered at our university, Stevens Institute of Technology, is taken by all engineering majors, including, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, biomedical engineering computer engineering, software engineering, electrical engineering. This broad representation underscores the need for instructional approaches that are effective for a diverse group of learners. As students come from various engineering backgrounds, the implementation of hands-on activities becomes especially important. These activities are designed to address the differing levels of familiarity and experience that students may have with Statics concepts.
The primary focus of these developed lab activities is to enhance students' qualitative understanding of Statics concepts, rather than simply emphasizing quantitative problem solving. For instance, in one activity, students are asked to change the moment arm for loosening a bolt and assess the applied force qualitatively. This activity helps students develop the intuition of moment arm and physically “feel” the force required to generate the moment in different scenarios.
In another activity, students create common supports—such as pins, links, rollers, and fixed supports – using provided materials to hold a plate in equilibrium. They then draw appropriate free body diagrams (FBDs) of the built system. This activity helps students understand how different supports maintain equilibrium and how to represent them in FBDs. Finally, students use an engineering kit to build trusses, analyze them, and identify zero force members. The overarching goal is to strengthen students' Statics foundations and prepare them to implement these concepts successfully.
The lab exercises are easy for other Statics instructors to use and help improve students' conceptual understanding. The hands-on activities are affordable, with each developed kit costing about $50. While formal quantitative assessment is pending, informal feedback shows that most students found the activities helpful for visualizing moment arms, support reactions, and FBDs. Future work includes quantitative evaluation of these activities on student learning.