Student pairs reverse engineer objects of their choice, learning what it takes to be an engineer. Groups each make a proposal, create a team work contract, use tools to disassemble a device, and sketch and document their full understanding of how it works. They compile what they learned into a manual and write-up that summarizes the object's purpose, bill of materials and operation procedure with orthographic and isometric sketches. Then they apply some of the steps of the engineering design process to come up with ideas for how the product or device could be improved for the benefit of the end user, manufacturer and/or environment. They describe and sketch their ideas for re-imagined designs (no prototyping or testing is done). To conclude, teams compile full reports and then recap their reverse engineering projects and investigation discoveries in brief class presentations. A PowerPoint(TM) presentation, written report and oral presentation rubrics, and peer evaluation form are provided.

Watch a reaction proceed over time. How does total energy affect a reaction rate? Vary temperature, barrier height, and potential energies. Record concentrations and time in order to extract rate coefficients. Do temperature dependent studies to extract Arrhenius parameters. This simulation is best used with teacher guidance because it presents an analogy of chemical reactions.

Watch a reaction proceed over time. How does total energy affect a reaction rate? Vary temperature, barrier height, and potential energies. Record concentrations and time in order to extract rate coefficients. Do temperature dependent studies to extract Arrhenius parameters. This simulation is best used with teacher guidance because it presents an analogy of chemical reactions.

Review of Six Critical Thinking Textbooks1. Thinking Well (3rd ed.) by Andrew Lavin2. Arguing Using Critical Thinking by Jim Marteney3. Critical Reasoning and Writing by Noah Levin4. Clear and Present Thinking (2nd ed.)5. Formal Reasoning by John Symons6. Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking by Matthew Van Cleve

Workshop explores the integration of economic development and physical planning interventions to revitalize urban commercial districts. Covers: an overview of the causes of urban business district decline, revitalization challenges, and the strategies to address them; the planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from both physical design and economic development perspectives; and the policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization. Students apply the theories, tools and interventions discussed in class to preparing a formal neighborhood commercial revitalization plan for a client business district.

This course focuses on the physical and economic renewal of urban neighborhood Main Streets by combining classroom work with an applied class project. The course content covers four broad areas: An overview of the causes for urban business district decline, the challenges faced in revitalization and the type of revitalization strategies employed, The physical and economic development planning tools used to understand and assess urban Main Streets from physical design and economic development perspectives. The policies, interventions, and investments used to foster urban commercial revitalization, and The formulation of a revitalization plan for an urban commercial district.

This art history video discussion examines Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lady Cockburn and Her Three Eldest Sons, 1773, oil on canvas.

R for Data Science is an online text for an introductory course in Data Science using the R programming language. The text is well written, well organized, modular, and contains useful examples and exercises for students.

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, practice, and implications of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This course specifically focuses on the ways that scientists use various methods of persuasion in the construction of scientific knowledge.

This course is an introduction to the theory, the practice, and the implications (both social and ethical) of rhetoric, the art and craft of persuasion. This semester, many of your skills will have the opportunity to be deepened by practice, including your analytical and critical thinking skills, your persuasive writing skills, and your oral presentation skills. In this course you will act as both a rhetor (a person who uses rhetoric) and as a rhetorical critic (one who studies the art of rhetoric). Both write to persuade; both ask and answer important questions. Always one of their goals is to create new knowledge for all of us, so no endeavor in this class is a "mere exercise."

In the Rhetorical Styles area of the Excelsior OWL, you’ll learn about different rhetorical styles or, essentially, different strategies for developing your essays and other writing assignments. These basic strategies are not all encompassing but will provide you with a foundation and a flexibility to help you as you engage in writing assignments in your introductory writing classes and beyond.

The first in a two-volume set, A Rhetoric of Literate Action is written for "the experienced writer with a substantial repertoire of skills, [who] now would find it useful to think in more fundamental strategic terms about what they want their texts to accomplish, what form the texts might take, how to develop specific contents, and how to arrange the work of writing." The reader is offered a framework for identifying and understanding the situations writing comes out of and is directed toward; a consideration of how a text works to transform a situation and achieve the writer's motives; and advice on how to bring the text to completion and "how to manage the work and one's own emotions and energies so as to accomplish the work most effectively."

This art history video discussion examines Jusepe (Jose) de Ribera's "The Martyrdom of Saint Philip", 1639, oil on canvas (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). The English Romantic poet, Lord Byron , wrote that the artist, "Spagnoletto [the little Spaniard] tainted/His brush with all the blood of all the sainted" (Don Juan , xiii. 71).

In this task students draw the graphs of two functions from verbal descriptions. Both functions describe the same situation but changing the viewpoint of the observer changes where the function has output value zero. This small twist forces the students to think carefully about the interpretation of the dependent variable.

Students write a biographical sketch of an artist or athlete who lives on the edge, riding the gravity wave, to better understand how these artists and athletes work with gravity and manage risk. Note: The literacy activities for the Mechanics unit are based on physical themes that have broad application to our experience in the world concepts of rhythm, balance, spin, gravity, levity, inertia, momentum, friction, stress and tension.

Through this lesson students learn how AM radios work through basic concepts about waves and magnetic fields. Waves are first introduced by establishing the difference between transverse and longitudinal waves, as well as identifying the amplitude and frequency of a given waveform. Students then learn general concepts about magnetic fields, leading into how radio waves are created and transmitted. Several demonstrations can be performed in order to help students better understand these concepts. The goal of this lesson is for students to understand how the AM radios built during the associated activity function.

This task provides a good opportunity to use isosceles triangles and their properties to show an interesting and important result about triangles inscribed in a circle: the fact that these triangles are always right triangles is often referred to as Thales' theorem. It does not have a lot of formal prerequisites, just the knowledge that the sum of the three angles in a triangle is 180 degrees.

The result here complements the fact, presented in the task ``Right triangles inscribed in circles I,'' that any triangle inscribed in a circle with one side being a diameter of the circle is a right triangle. A second common proof of this result rotates the triangle by 180 degrees about M and then shows that the quadrilateral, obtained by taking the union of these two triangles, is a rectangle.

Students experience the engineering design process as they design and build accurate and precise catapults using common materials. They use their catapults to participate in a game in which they launch Ping-Pong balls to attempt to hit various targets.