Introduction of Dynamics Laboratory in MET Program

Dynamics is scheduled as a sophomore level second semester class in the Mechanical Engineering Technology curriculum at Georgia Southern University. It is currently a four credit hour course out of which one credit is separately assigned for a two hour lab session. However, these lab hours were primarily used as interactive problem solving sessions. In the present work, the author introduced three separate physical laboratory experiments in the course while retaining most of the hours for problem solving sessions. The challenge was to introduce a “hands on” component in the course in compliance with the philosophy of a technology program without the requirement of a high level of report-writing skill. The first experiment was the motion analysis of a toy cart where the data was collected and analyzed using National Instruments’ hardware and LabView software. The second experiment was the determination of the mass moment of inertia of cylindrical object using the torsional pendulum principle. These two experiments were severed from the current lab-based Mechatronics course and a senior level elective Vibration course to free up their lab hours for more advanced topics. The last experiment was the determination of coefficient of restitution. This is experiment is still in the developing stage. A Newton’s pendulum was modified to build the experimental set up. Students were asked for their suggestions to improve the accuracy and method of this experiment. The optimum method will be adopted for future use. A detailed survey was conducted which shows a positive opinion of the students about the introduction physical lab experiments in the Dynamics course. This work brings the undergraduate student research component into the course.