Managing Motherhood Online: Authority, Assemblage, and Fetal Personhood

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Blowing off Steam Tables

In thermodynamics courses, there is appreciable time and effort devoted to teaching steam tables. Despite this, students still find the ability to use steam tables for retrieving thermodynamic properties a challenging skill to master. The challenges arise from the need to interpolate, the need to identify the correct region, and the requisite familiarity with property trends. The use of steam tables to retrieve thermodynamic properties is often presented to students as a keystone skill for subsequent study of steam power plants. However, if graduates do not require this skill in practice, perhaps we are simply teaching an obsolete system that serves the course objectives but not beyond. Several compelling alternatives exist. Among them, computerized thermodynamic property databases for common substances are readily available and can rapidly supply state properties. However, we want to avoid tools that simply supply property values without reinforcing thermodynamic fundamentals. For instance, steam tables can supply accurate property values, but they fail to emphasize the interdependence of these properties. Instead, the use of property diagrams to solve thermodynamic problems can greatly improve students’ understanding of thermodynamics by visualizing property relationships. As a highly visual and intuitive tool, property diagrams eliminate the time devoted to mastering steam tables. After teaching steam tables for multiple years within a year-long thermal-fluid sciences course and recognizing the poor pedagogic utility, the steam tables were entirely replaced by the temperature-entropy diagram as the primary source for water thermodynamic properties. This paper discusses the implementation, challenges, and the outcomes of this introduction. Apart from developing instructions aligned solely to property diagrams, a number of visual tools were identified, adopted, and developed to facilitate the transition. The overall outcomes were notably positive from a student learning perspective. Students quickly became comfortable using the T-s diagrams to solve the same textbook problems they would have solved using steam tables. The loss of accuracy was more than made up by their ability to quickly identify a state and retrieve its properties. Furthermore, students improved their ability to predict property trends when compared to students who relied primarily on steam tables. The results highlight the need for change in thermodynamics pedagogy by abandoning steam tables and emphasizing the fundamentals necessary to study steam power plants

Wave Energy Converter Design Project

As part of a multidisciplinary sophomore-level engineering design and technical writing course, a project that required students to design a small-scale ocean wave energy converter through a series of experiments was implemented. The project was designed to fulfill several of the course goals, which range from engineering design to engineering communication. For example, the goal of the engineering/design portion of the course is for students to demonstrate effective design processes, which include generating multiple engineering design solutions, applying sound engineering principles to choose the best solution and see it through to completion, and using parametric design to optimize an artifact or process. The communication goals of the course are for students to write in various engineering genres and demonstrate specific communication abilities needed for engineering communication

Gas Sensing Properties of Single Conducting Polymer Nanowires and the Effect of Temperature

We measured the electronic properties and gas sensing responses of template-grown poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT/PSS)-based nanowires. The nanowires have a "striped" structure (gold-PEDOT/PSS-gold), typically 8um long (1um-6um-1um for each section, respectively) and 220 nm in diameter. Single-nanowire devices were contacted by pre-fabricated gold electrodes using dielectrophoretic assembly. A polymer conductivity of 11.5 +/- 0.7 S/cm and a contact resistance of 27.6 +/- 4 kOhm were inferred from measurements of nanowires of varying length and diameter. The nanowire sensors detect a variety of odors, with rapid response and recovery (seconds). The response (R-R0)/R0 varies as a power law with analyte concentration.Comment: 4 figures 8 pages, add 2 reference

Pre-defined roles and team performance for first year students

A framework for managing and guiding student teams in a first-year engineering course is compared to less structured but commonly used methods. In the new framework, students take on rotating roles during laboratory projects throughout the semester. Furthermore, teams submit three versions of each report: rough draft, draft, and final. Finally, students complete peer evaluation on-line. On-line student and faculty surveys and multiple focus groups were used to evaluate the framework, which was employed in 3 sections of a 16 section first-year engineering course. Results indicate that, compared to the other common team scenarios, the framework results in improvements in students’ self-appraisal of their teaming abilities at the end of the semester, students writing a greater variety of laboratory report sections, student teams more quickly entering the “performing” stage of the team adjustment phases, and more students taking on a leadership role at least once during the semester. The framework produced no reduction in free riders or increase in laboratory report quality, at least as reported by students

Consumer Reports Inspired Introduction to Engineering Project

Freshman engineering courses play a crucial role in educating students about the various engineering disciplines and their functions, in addition to establishing a strong analytical foundation. Recognizing the importance of basic experimentation techniques, a new freshman engineering project was designed to expose students to the overall engineering profession with emphasis on developing fundamental technical and laboratory skills. The project was inspired by the popular Consumer Reports magazine, which publishes reviews of consumer products upon rigorous testing and analytical surveys. Specifically, we note the strong overlap between core functions of an engineer and the process with which Consumer Reports reviews are generated. Freshman students were asked to select three brands of a consumer product for their review with instructor consultation. The products ranged from well-marketed kitchen tools to popular children’s toys. The student teams designed experiments to systematically test quantifiable properties of these products, analyze the data and recommend a specific brand. The project enabled students to practice core engineering functions such as design of experiments,measurement, data analysis, and representation. In essence developing laboratory skills without necessarily requiring a strong theoretical understanding to conduct the experiments. Most importantly, the project afforded students the autonomy to design their own sub-project within the provided constraints. The students also recognized the importance of soft skills such as teamwork, effective communication, and project management in achieving their purpose of identifying a superior brand. This paper presents the overall scope of the project and its outcomes, including the details for adopting the Consumer Reports Project within a freshman engineering course or, alternatively, in a high school technical course. The paper highlights implementation, including project milestones, and assessment of this highly student-driven hands-on project. Pre- and post-tests were conducted to assess the effectiveness of the project in achieving the project objectives. Formative student surveys indicated a very positive response to the project, acknowledging the independence of product selection as the key aspect in making the project engaging. The highly flexible and scalable aspects of the project make it ideal as an introductory engineering project focused on developing a strong experimental foundation, at the same time providing a broad overview of the engineering profession

Strategies for Using Online Practice Problems

PathFinder is an active website coded in html, asp.net, c#, JavaScript, xml, and MathML. The website assembles ebooks on the fly from an xml database. The ebooks have randomly selected and generated exercises that are automatically graded. Instantaneous feedback is provided to both students and professors regarding performance on on-line exercises. PathFinder is used to deliver an ebook to a first year introductory engineering course. In Fall 2013 12 sections of 20 – 25 students each used the Pathfinder ebook. This provides an opportunity to investigate the effectiveness of on-line practice problems. PathFinder provides on-line practice problems that students can work before completing scored problems. Practice problems can be similar or related to the student’s scored problem. A similar practice problem is identical to the scored problem (same problem statement), but the given input values are different. A related practice problem is different from the scored problem, both in input values and problem statement. Four sets of four problems each were used to investigate 4 scenarios. Scenarios were randomly applied such that each student was exposed to all four scenarios, but on different sets of problems. In all scenarios the fourth problem had no practice problem, so it could be used as a test of the effectiveness of the practice problems provided for the first three problems. In the first scenario, no practice problems were provided. In the second, three similar practice problems were provided. In the third, three related practice problems were provided. In the fourth, the first problem had a similar, the second a related, and the third no practice problem.The effectiveness of each scenario will be evaluated using (1) student scores on the fourth problems, (2) survey questions completed by students after finishing each series of four questions, and (3) examination performance on related problems. The results are expected to provide feedback that can be used to select one scenario for providing practice problems in the future

Proximity-induced superconductivity in nanowires: Mini-gap state and differential magnetoresistance oscillations

We study proximity-induced superconductivity in gold nanowires as a function of the length of the nanowire, magnetic field, and excitation current. Short nanowires exhibit a sharp superconducting transition, whereas long nanowires show nonzero resistance. At intermediate lengths, however, we observe two sharp transitions; the normal and superconducting regions are separated by what we call the mini-gap phase. Additionally, we detect periodic oscillations in the differential magnetoresistance. We provide a theoretical model for the mini-gap phase as well as the periodic oscillations in terms of the coexistence of proximity-induced superconductivity with a normal region near the center of the wire, created either by temperature or application of a magnetic field.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Capture and recovery of organic gases with electrothermal swing adsorption and post-desorption treatment

Several industrial processes, including foam packaging manufacturing, use liquefied organic gases (boiling points (Tb) < 20°C) as inert feedstocks. These processes produce low concentration (e.g., 2,000 ppmv) organic gas streams that must be treated to prevent emissions of the organic gases to the atmosphere. The organic gases are typically not reused in the process and are instead thermally oxidized. The ability to selectively capture, concentrate, and reuse the effluent organic gases is expected to increase the opportunities to manufacture materials in a more sustainable manner and improve the economics of industrial processes that emit organic gases to the atmosphere. Activated carbon fiber cloth (ACFC) with electrothermal swing adsorption (ACFC-ESA) has been shown to be an effective means of capturing and recovering organic vapors (Tb > 50°C). However, additional gas treatment needs to be coupled downstream of the ACFC-ESA system to extend this technology to capture and recover organic gases. To this end, a new bench-scale ACFC-ESA gas recovery system (GRS) with post-desorption condensation was developed and tested with four organic gases and under a select range of process conditions to assess its effectiveness for capturing and recovering organic gases. The GRS was tested to determine the mass collection efficiency and energy requirements for recovering liquid adsorbate from a carrier gas containing select concentrations of each adsorbate. The four adsorbates tested were: isobutane, R134A, n-butane, and dichloromethane. The inlet relative pressure of the adsorbates ranged from 8.3x10-5 to 3.4x10-3. The GRS successfully captured and recovered all relative pressures and adsorbates of interest except dichloromethane, which was chemically incompatible with components of the GRS. Of the remaining adsorbates (i.e., isobutane, R134A, and n-butane), each was captured and recovered with greater than 99% mass collection efficiency, which meets existing emission reduction requirements for packaging manufacturing. The heating and compression energy required to capture and liquefy the gases ranged from 1,200 to 52,000 kJ/mol liquefied depending on the relative pressure of the inlet adsorbate. This energy consumption is 0.87 – 138 times that to recover vapors with boiling points ranging from 56.5 - 101°C using the Vapor Phase Removal and Recovery System (VaPRRS), which is similar to the GRS, but does not include compression and cooling and thus cannot liquefy low boiling point organic gases. The GRS system was also modified to capture isobutane from a carrier gas with select relative humidities that ranged from 5-80% while maintaining the water vapor concentration of the carrier gas. During this testing, the clean, humid adsorption carrier gas and the N2 used to inert the system during desorption were recirculated for the first time, which resulted in a reduction in the amount of water vapor and N2 required to operate the system once it reached steady state. In an industrial setting, this new ability to recycle the carrier gas stream is expected to improve system sustainability and reduce operating costs because it eliminates the need for re-humidification, decreases the demand for N2 production to inert the adsorption vessels during desorption, and reduces energy requirements. The energy required to capture and recover isobutane (relative pressure = 6.7x10-4) with relative humidities ranging from 5 to 80% ranged from 2910 – 5750 kJ/mol liquefied. Experiments with recirculating carrier gas showed that the energy requirements to capture and recover liquid isobutane from a high relative humidity adsorption stream were significantly lower at the 95% confidence level than in experiments without carrier gas recirculation. Based on these results, implementing ACFC-ESA with carrier gas recirculation, particularly for humid adsorption gas streams, reduces the humidification energy requirements by 60%, the energy to supply N2 by 25 to 60%, and the total energy to capture and recover liquid isobutane (heating, compression, water and N2 energy) by 38%, while also reusing resources such as N2 and water. This research is a significant advancement over previous research accomplishments because the GRS expands the applicability of ACFC-ESA to compounds with boiling points below 20°C. Additionally, characterization of the GRS using mass and energy balances has shown that it can be used for compounds with boiling points ranging from -26.5°C to -0.5°C so long as those compounds have a reasonable, reversible affinity for ACFC. Finally, demonstrating that operation of this technology with humidified gas streams and carrier gas recirculation reduces the water vapor, N2, and overall energy requirements makes the technology more likely to be adopted by industries that generate low concentration organic gas streams

How Engineering Education Guilds are Expanding our Understanding of Propagation in Engineering Education

Background: The National Science Foundation (NSF) and other organizations have spent millions of dollars each year supporting well-designed educational innovations that positively impact the undergraduate engineering students who encounter them. However, many of these pedagogical innovations never experience widespread adoption. To further the ability of innovation developers to advance engineering education practice and achieve sustained adoption of their innovations, this paper focuses on exploring how one community-based model, engineering education guilds, fosters propagation across institutions and individuals. Engineering education guilds seek to work at the forefront of educational innovation by creating networks of instructor change-agents who design and implement a particular innovation in their own context. The guilds of interest are the Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) and the Kern Entrepreneurial Engineering Network (KEEN). With these guilds as exemplars, this study’s purpose is (1) to articulate how the approaches of engineering education guilds align with existing literature on supporting sustained adoption of educational innovations and (2) to identify how these approaches can advance the STEM education community’s discussion of propagation practices through the use of the Designing for Sustained Adoption Assessment Instrument (DSAAI). The DSAAI is a conceptual framework based on research in sustained adoption of pedagogical innovations. It has previously been previously used in the form of a rubric to analyze dissemination and propagation plans of NSF educational grant recipients and was shown been shown to predict the effectiveness of those propagation plans. Results: Through semi-structured interviews with two leaders from each guild, we observed strong alignment between the structures of CRPEE and KEEN and evidence-based sustained adoption characteristics. For example, both guilds identified their intended audience early in their formation, developed and implemented extensive plans for engaging and supporting potential adopters, and accounted for the complexity of the higher education landscape and their innovations in their propagation plans. Conclusions: Our results suggest that guilds could provide another approach to innovation, as their structures can be aligned with evidence-based methods for propagating pedagogical innovations. Additionally, while the DSAAI captures many of the characteristics of a well-designed propagation strategy, there are additional components that emerged as successful strategies used by the CPREE and KEEN guild leaders. These strategies could and should be considered as educational innovators work to encourage adoption of their innovations, including having mutual accountability among adopters and connecting adoption of innovations to faculty reward structures in the form of recognition and funding