Lab Week-5 Velocity Value

There is a conflict between the instructions and the “grading criteria” spreadsheet for what velocity to use for the river.

We will accept either the 1.6mph of the instructions or a velocity calculated as in the grading criteria sheet.  Since the TA’s mentioned the 1.6mph value in the session last Thursday that is the preferred value.

Some more memo help

Engineering Lab Memos - reposted from CAEE 201 Spring 2013

A sizable component of your engineering and academic career will be acquiring data and presenting your work.  There are many ways to present your work: laboratory reports, memos, executive summaries, professional letters, posters, and presentation formats.  Perfecting your business and engineering writing styles takes practice and matures over time.  Many times the documents that you produce may become legal documents, subject to future scrutiny should a problem arise.

Be sure to conduct your own search to locate good sources for writing examples.  I've included a few to get you started.

Here is a great source for writing laboratory reports, where the major sections are discussed: Abstract, Introduction, Procedures, Results and Discussion, Conclusions, and Appendices:
http://www.writing.engr.psu.edu/workbooks/laboratory.html

When writing business memos, always avoid the use of first person, casual tone and opinion.  You just need present the important data keeping in mind the purpose, details, limitations, and implications of your work.

For example: We took a tour of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge and it was so fun to get hands-on experience and measure the strain gage distance for ourselves.

A better way to state the same activities: A site tour of the Tacony-Palymyra Bridge was conducted and field measurements were recorded to determine the strain gage distance.

Here is a great source for writing business memos:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/590/04/

You can always get help here at Drexel by utilizing the Writing Center:
http://drexel.edu/engphil/about/DrexelWritingCenter/
http://drexel.edu/engphil/about/DrexelWritingCenter/workshops/

They also have various workshops you may register for during the various terms:
http://drexel.edu/engphil/about/DrexelWritingCenter/workshops/

Post-grading feedback Lab 2

Procedure:

- It was possible to see that location 1 gravel and location 2 mud have unsaturated and saturated 'sub-layers'

- Total Stress = [Unit weight of material in layer] * [Material Layer Thickness]

- Effective Stress = [Total Stress] - [Specific Weight of Water] * [Saturated Material Layer Thickness]

Chart:

- Profile - should be a continuous line or curve

 - Profile - do not use Trendline (Layout Analysis tab); this feature is not intended for our type of Labs. Use Chart types from Design Type tab.

- When you produce datapoints for your chart please use and leave Excel formulas so we can see how you obtained them

- Axis title and labels should be on the same side if possible

Format:

 - When preparing a table for a chart please keep it formatted, e.g, borders, headings, column names etc. Points will be deducted in the "Format and clear organization of the entire document and its parts" line

- Equations as ∑ _(i=1)^n  γ_i Z_i = γ_1 Z_1 + γ_2 Z_2 + γ_3 Z_3….+ γ_n Z_n  are not in any accepted notations and are not intelligible. Notations as σ(v) = Y(1)Z(1) + Y(2)Z(2) +Y(3)Z(3) are slightly better but still, have ambiguity, and may not be understood properly by a person distant from this specific lab and lecture[k1] .

- Reminder to use named cells

Memo:

- Keep Memo language formal, avoid "like", "kind", "us engineers",

- Grammar - write Memo in a text processor and Copy-Paste into Excel. Excel does not have the spell check capability!

- If you decide to report key equations in Memo please report factors used. E.g., F = ma, where F is force, m is mass and a is acceleration

Units:

- When establish a new data column please indicate units

- When you apply multiplication or division operator there's a good chance your units will change! Example: Unit Weight [lb/ft³] * Layer Height [ft] = Stress [lb / ft²]

Calculations:

- Don't round intermediate results

General feedback:

- - Please read the Lab instructions and the lecture materials before the Lab, come prepared!

-- Don't wait to submit  until 09:50 when many other students may overload the server and you may not be able to submit successfully

-- Charts have a random place on a chart Quest[k2] 

-- Reporting units, please avoid extraneous symbols, e.g., (psf_)

- Please check if your new suggestions repeat previous - don't re-submit. "Give us meaningful suggestions for improving this lab or CAEE-201". Many suggestions essentially say "Make the labs simpler"

---

 [k1]I took points off if they did not define their variables

 [k2]Rephrase this

Seeing The Graded File Returned by The TA

Several students have been unclear how to access the files that the TA’s have graded and returned via BbLearn.  Here are instructions that should help.

• Open the course in BbLearn
• Click on Grades in the left column
• Click on the title of assignment - e.g. "Week-3 Lab Structures"
• You’ll see the attached file in lower right under the small heading "File Name"
• Click on it to see it
• You can download it by clicking on the small icon with a downward arrow in top dark bar - 2nd from right.

Sketch of bridge for lab

For the bridge lab, the sketch can be combined for question 1 and 2 if you like. It can be done by hand and scanned in, drawn in paint, or using arrows pointing to a picture you took at the site, for example. It should be a rough drawing of the bridge section you looked at, with the dimensions you measured labelled on it. Here is a schematic from the bridge that might help- make sure you do your own.

Post-grading feedback Lab 1

1. Following the 1st Feedback Blog Entry will help avoid many errors for the Lab1.
2. Memo writing was graded generously  but you must improve your memo writing. The blog entry Memo Writing for Lab Reports contains suggestions for writing a good Memo. We will not be so generous on future assignments.
3. In the US Customary Unit System a pound (lb) is used as a unit of both mass and force. Please use correct one when making your calculations.
4. If you need to convert mass into force, you cannot use g = 9.81 m/s². What value of g in the US Customary Units ft/s²? It was in the 10/9 lecture.
5. EXCEL -- starting Lab2 all exercise calculations must be done with Excel by entering formulas into cells for example =C31+D32 instead of =4+5
6. A common mistake was forgetting to multiply the pipe length by the number of stories.
7. When presenting two or more charts (as it was in Q6 Lab1), please format your graphs so they are both the same size.
8. Bridges charts – a legend was not needed since just one subject is featured. An appropriate title is sufficient. Conversion factors have to be taken with max or +2 extra sig figs than the data with max sig figs.
9. Please watch significant figures. An extra sig fig maybe excused in this class but still it simply is not needed. Correct number of sig figs will be increasingly enforced.
10. If  you used rounded intermediate calculations to arrive at a final answers there may have been a loss in precision. It’s best to put rounded values in a separate cell and use the cells with formulas when calculating your final answer. Then round the final answer.
11. In our comments s f = sig figs
12. ROUND for integers made easy with num_digits set as a negative integer. From Excel help: "If num_digits is less than 0, the number is rounded to the left of the decimal point"