Essential Mechanics - Statics and Strength of Materials with MATLAB and Octave
P. Venkataraman

Essential Mechanics - Statics and Strength of Materials with MATLAB and Octave combines two core engineering science courses - “Statics” and “Strength of Materials” - in mechanical, civil, and aerospace engineering. It weaves together various essential topics from Statics and Strength of Materials to allow discussing structural design from the very beginning. The traditional content of these courses are reordered to make it convenient to cover rigid body equilibrium and extend it to deformable body mechanics.The e-book covers the most useful topics from both courses with computational support through MATLAB/Octave. The traditional approach for engineering content is emphasized and is rigorously supported through graphics and analysis. Prior knowledge of MATLAB is not necessary. Instructions for its use in context is provided and explained. It takes advantage of the numerical, symbolic, and graphical capability of MATLAB for effective problem solving. This computational ability provides a natural procedure for What if? exploration that is important for design. The book also emphasizes graphics to understand, learn, and explore design. The idea for this book, the organization, and the flow of content is original and new. The integration of computation, and the marriage of analytical and computational skills is a new valuable experience provided by this e-book. Most importantly the book is very interactive with respect to the code as it appears along with the analysis.

Explore size estimation in one, two and three dimensions! Multiple levels of difficulty allow for progressive skill improvement.

What does it mean for a source to be credible? Why is it important to use these sources? How can you tell if a source is credible?

This resource, provided by Wisconsin Fast Plants and CurrikiStudio, contains a set of six different learning activities that can be implemented in classrooms to teach natural selection. Organized in playlists, these interactive lessons guide students through understanding and applying knowledge of natural selection. The specific playlists and modules include: Population Pre-think for discussion: Factors that affect traits in populations Checking for understanding: Investigating Change Over Time in Populations Exploring Selection Models Looking for Evidence in Data Selection Models Genetics Review The Language of Genetics Looking for Patterns and Analyzing Population Data

In this online activity, learners discover how random variation influences biological evolution. Biological evolution is often thought of as a process by which adaptation is generated through selection.Œć While it is recognized that random variation underlies the process, emphasis is usually placed on selection and resulting adaptation, leaving a sense that it is selection that drives evolution.Œć This simulation highlights the creative role of random variation, offering a somewhat different perspective: that of evolution as open-ended exploration driven by randomness and constrained by selection, with adaptation as a dynamic, transient consequence rather than an objective.

This animation describes the formation of exocrine glands starting with the mitosis of mesenchymal tissues, eventually leading to the formation of the secretory portion of the gland by differentiation.

1. Instructor identifies an appropriate number of key dates in the Precambrian to investigate.
2. Students break into groups (method to be determined by instructor) and each group will be assigned a particular time in the Precambrian (one author likes to have groups draw assignments out of hat!).
3. Students investigate their time period using appropriate source materials (we suggest the class notes, textbook and perhaps supplementary materials identified in the form of popular articles (e.g., Scientific American, Smithsonian, National Geographic, etc.) or websites.
Questions

Using your prior knowledge of your time period, what scientific equipment might you want to take with you?
What will you experience on your time travels?
Is there a place to land?
What is the temperature?
Can you breathe the atmosphere?
Do you need a life support system?
What is the atmosphere composed of?
Is there any water? What is its phase? Can you drink it?
Do you see any life, or evidence of its presence? How would you recognize the life?
What life do you expect to observe or not observe, and why?
What questions were you able to answer with your trip?
What questions were you unable to answer?
What aspects of the environment at this time most surprised or stuck you?

4. Group presentation
a) Create a very simple PowerPoint presentation (10 minutes) for the class.
b) Each group member must present part of the information.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

In this activity, students are presented with two objects that have different constant speeds and that will race each other. The students must determine which object will win the race, as well as either how much time elapses between the objects crossing the finish line.

This is an activity on apparent sizes and apparent angles, related to understanding how distance affects what we observe in outer space (the sun, moon, stars, or planets).

The site is a colorful and interactive imaginary recreation of Leonardo da Vinci's studio. Users can click on 12 items for more information. Produced by BBCi/Open University, this site is part of a large collection of materials on da Vinci.

When J.J. Thomson first discovered that a cathode ray was actually a particle beam consisting of a stream of electrons, he concluded that these new particles were not just another type of atom. Explore and compare the behavior of electrons vs. charged atoms when they are shot through an electric field of varying intensity.

Explore the structure of various proteins and see how the nonpolar amino acids form the core of many protein structures.

This simulation allows you to use a slider to see how positive and negative integers add on a number line.

This is a teacher demonstration used to show an example of kinetic molecular energy using food coloring and water. The students are also given opportunity to develop their own questions and tests.

Using the scientific method this simple hands on experiment is designed to verify Newton's Second Law.

Explore a protein and its components using a simplified representation to see structure; or a view of all atoms to see full details.

An activity in which students use dice to explore radioactive decay and dating and make simple calculations.

(Note: this resource was added to OER Commons as part of a batch upload of over 2,200 records. If you notice an issue with the quality of the metadata, please let us know by using the 'report' button and we will flag it for consideration.)

Download this complete and coherently designed, middle school level unit to teach fundamental concepts that underpin the theory of evolution. The unit was collaboratively designed by teachers, college faculty & staff, and the Fast Plants Program at UW-Madison to support student-centered inquiry-based learning. The unit's storyline is underpinned by the 5E model. Like three dimensional learning as described by the Next Generation Science Standards, this unit is designed for students to learn academic content by working like scientists: making observations, asking questions, doing further investigations to explore and explain natural phenomena, and communicating results based on evidence. Immersion Units are intended to support teachers in building a learning culture in their classrooms to sustain students’ enthusiasm for engaging in scientific habits of thinking while learning rigorous science content.

This is a teacher demonstration used to show an example of kinetic molecular energy using food coloring and water. The students are also given opportunity to develop their own questions and tests.