Reinventing Engineering Statics to Address the Conceptual Difficulties of Students

Abstract

The goal of Statics instruction should be its application to gaining insight into, and to designing, engineering systems. The typical textbook experience, relying strongly on mathematical manipulations, is not adequate to preparing students to model mechanical systems. Experienced users of mechanics rely on an intuitive, even visceral, sense for the forces which are present in mechanical systems, and how they combine to maintain the system in equilibrium (or produce its motion). With the observation that students do not readily perceive forces between inanimate objects, we have reorganized Statics instruction to focus initially on situations in which they can experience forces directly: forces exerted by hand or that are evident from motion or deformation. Within this overall philosophy, we developed learning modules that address discrete concepts with which students traditionally have difficulty. Learning modules include simple objects to manipulate, PowerPoint presentations, and multiple-choice questions relevant to the concepts that the modules convey. In this paper we identify a series of important concepts in Statics, and we offer several excerpts from new or improved Learning Modules, focusing on how the Learning Module seeks to address students’ conceptual difficulties.