Engineering Technology DivisionCurriculum Development in Mechanical Engineering Technology

摘要

Present and future engineering technology students have been in a long standing,subliminal educational environment that is effecting their intuition as regards the physicallaws of science and engineering. That environment consists of their exposure to not onlyscience fiction and science fantasy films but also daily newspaper comics featuring nonengineeringcharacters (even Dilbert has been a culprit in this deception) and summeradventuremovies starring their action hero actors who ‘can-do-no-wrong”. Thisexposure results in a subliminal effect on what the young boy or girl understands is theway the universe works. For example, actors are seen swinging from the middle of arope bridge that is over 100 ft long only to survive the crash against the steep sides of thecliff. In reality the swing from such a height is equivalent of jumping from a 50 ft tallbuilding and expecting to survive! While it is certainly entertaining to see the hero of thefilm survive, the unintended message that the stunt delivers is that the laws of physics aredifferent than what they are in reality. What was once a bending of the physical laws ofthe universe in animated films has now been expanded to adventure films with humanactors who enjoy the exaggerated use of computer derived special affects.This paper sites other several examples of this false instruction and suggests that thissubliminal instruction into the laws of physics is resulting in a reduction in the intuitionfor our future engineering students. The subsequent re-instruction of the actualengineering physics becomes a much more difficult chore for engineering instructors.The paper also illustrates how such sources of miss-information can be used to entertainand educate the engineering student in the reality of the physical laws.Although the pedagogy described in this paper has not been adopted as part of the generalcurriculum for instructing engineering technology students at Northeastern University, ithas been successfully used by the author. That success has been measured by thestudent’s enhanced reception and interest to these case study problems that are workedoutin the author’s Mechanical Engineering Technology courses. The case studies areusually good examples of Feasibility Analysis in Dynamics, Stress Analysis, Introductionto Fluid Dynamics, Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer. The students find theseexamples to be an interesting diversion from the typical “real world” examples and/orCase Studies that are typically used for instruction. The result is not only a moreentertaining presentation but also a lesson in feasibility analysis applied to a problem that the students usually assume is already “feasible” given the authority: the printed page orlive-action cinema. The lesson quickly reveals that short-comings of not preparing avalid feasibility analysis.