Writing and Interdisciplinary Collaborative Design is a 4-credit hour project-based and writing course for first-year engineering students who are residents of the Living ArtsEngine living-learning community housed in Bursley Hall. The course also involves a major Technical Communications component, focusing on preparing communicative deliverables for professional contexts. There are three main lab projects, which students work on (successively) in assigned teams throughout the semester. The course includes lectures, laboratory sessions, and discussion/recitation sessions. We will also learn the rudiments of inventing technological solutions, and consider factors that may lead to those inventions catalyzing technological revolutions. We will learn to systematically describe the progression of a material being used in different ways during its reign, and to look for patterns that can help predict potential evolution of materials. We will learn to identify and articulate specific engineering dilemmas that require big breakthroughs in materials, and to map ecosystems of resources and processes (“technology bundles”) needed for the growth and dominance of a material. ![]() We will pay particular attention to when materials serve as “function shifters” – seemingly magical constructs that attain unprecedented performance (characterized by figures of merit), thereby allowing people to circumvent pre-existing design trade-offs, improving human survival, prosperity, and longevity, and changing established paradigms. The course will combine a historical and philosophical view of materials science with a practical understanding of how the field pervades many disciplines – within engineering and in other related areas. We might ask: What materials and associated processes made them possible? What new industries did they enable? What new problems did they create, and how can we anticipate and address them? What impact will the ongoing evolution and impact of materials science have on society? In this course, we will attempt to answer these questions. From spears, textiles, clay pots, and the printing press – to bread, sugar, coffee, processed foods, to internal combustion engines, electric motors, radio, transistors, magnetic and solid state information storage and smartphones – we recognize these products and technologies as some of the most important developments in human history. “Stone Age,” “Iron Age,” “Rust Belt,” “Silicon Valley” – we associate these terms with significant aspects of human civilization. Some materials have triggered technological revolutions, which in turn have shaped cultures, defined epochs, and served as a foundation of the world’s economy and politics. ![]() Instructors: Tim Chambers, M ax Shtein and Ken Alfano
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