Matching Items (39)
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- All Subjects: engineering
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- Creators: Engineering Programs
- Creators: Chemical Engineering Program
- Creators: Davis, Mary
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
- Resource Type: Text
Description
The goal of this research was to identify why the federal government should invest in solar research and development, and which areas of solar improvement should be focused on. Motivation for this can be found in the pressing need to prevent and reverse the effects of climate change, the inevitability of fossil fuel resources eventually running out, and the economic and job creation potential which solar energy holds. Additionally, it is important to note that the best course of action will involve a split of funding between current solar rollout and energy grid updating, and the R&D listed in this research. Upon examination, it can be seen that an energy revolution, led by a federal solar jobs program and a Green New Deal, would be both an ethically and economically beneficial solution. A transition from existing fossil fuel infrastructure to renewable, solar-powered infrastructure would not only be possible but highly beneficial in many aspects, including massive job creation, a more affordable, renewable energy solution to replace coal-fired plants, and no fuel spending or negotiation required.<br/>When examining which areas of solar improvement to focus on for R&D funding, four primary areas were identified, with solutions presented for each. These areas for improvement are EM capture, EM conversion efficiency, energy storage capacity, and the prevention of overheating. For each of these areas of improvement, affordable solutions that would greatly improve the efficiency and viability of solar as a primary energy source were identified. The most notable area that should be examined is solar storage, which would allow solar PV panels to overcome their greatest real and perceived obstacle, which is the inconsistent power generation. Solar storage is easily attainable, and with enough storage capacity, excess solar energy which would otherwise be wasted during the day can be stored and used during the night or cloudy weather as necessary. Furthermore, the implementation of highly innovative solutions, such as agrivoltaics, would allow for a solar revolution to occur.
ContributorsWhitlow, Hunter Marshall (Author) / Fong, Benjamin (Thesis director) / Andino, Jean (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Engineering is a multidisciplinary field with a variety of applications. However, since there are so many disciplines of engineering, it is often challenging to find the discipline that best suits an individual interested in engineering. Not knowing which area of engineering most aligns to one’s interests is challenging when deciding on a major and a career. With the development of the Engineering Interest Quiz (EIQ), the goal was to help individuals find the field of engineering that is most similar to their interests. Initially, an Engineering Faculty Survey (EFS) was created to gather information from engineering faculty at Arizona State University (ASU) and to determine keywords that describe each field of engineering. With this list of keywords, the EIQ was developed. Data from the EIQ compared the engineering students’ top three results for the best engineering discipline for them with their current engineering major of study. The data analysis showed that 70% of the respondents had their major listed as one of the top three results they were given and 30% of the respondents did not have their major listed. Of that 70%, 64% had their current major listed as the highest or tied for the highest percentage and 36% had their major listed as the second or third highest percentage. Furthermore, the EIQ data was compared between genders. Only 33% of the male students had their current major listed as their highest percentage, but 55% had their major as one of their top three results. Women had higher percentages with 63% listing their current major as their highest percentage and 81% listing it in the top three of their final results.
ContributorsWagner, Avery Rose (Co-author) / Lucca, Claudia (Co-author) / Taylor, David (Thesis director) / Miller, Cindy (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This thesis presents a kit of materials intended to present students with a glimpse of what engineering entails by guiding them through building engineering projects similar to what is in the real world. The objective of this project is to pique the interest of children by introducing them to lesser known engineering related topics, and increasing their literacy of terms and methods engineers use to solve problems. The effectiveness of the kit’s content and teaching methods was tested in a classroom of 6th graders and was measured using the responses from surveys handed out. I found that kit did in fact positively lead to a change in the way the students perceived engineering, and it taught students about new engineering related topics. Students were capable of completing difficult tasks of wiring and coding successfully through the use of detailed instruction. However, the instructions were seen in two opposing views of either being too overwhelming or more guidance was necessary.
ContributorsQuezada, Hebellyn Arleth (Author) / Aukes, Daniel (Thesis director) / Kellam, Nadia (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The relationship between video games and education is something that has been studied extensively in academia. Based upon these studies a new concept was created, gamification. Gamification is the next step in video game research to analyze why video games enhance learning. The interest and research into this concept have developed so much so that it has become its own topic area for research. This study is looking to analyze the effect that gamification has on not only learning, but also self-efficacy. Through a choose your own adventure game, the knowledge and self-efficacy of participants will be examined to observe the differences when learning difficult engineering concepts with and without gamification. It is expected that participants that experienced training through gamification will demonstrate deeper learning and higher self-efficacy than trained through a video. Furthermore, it is anticipated that some video trained participants’ self-efficacy will increase; however, their comprehension will be less than participants trained through gamification. The results of this study can help promote the interest in researching gamification and education, while influencing educators to corporate gamification elements when designing their courses. Moreover, this study continued through adaptation and integration into a statics forces class, investigated if the same results can be found within a classroom setting.
ContributorsKanechika, Amber (Author) / Craig, Scotty (Thesis director) / Roscoe, Rod (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
The purpose of this study is to spark a discussion for engineers and their firms to consider the impact of border barriers on wildlife. The focus of this study is to consider if or how engineers make those considerations, such as through design modifications. Barriers block wildlife migration patterns, disabling them from life-sustaining resources. This is particularly important due to an increasing trend in habitat loss, urban development, and climate change. During literature analysis of border barrier impacts, and outreaching to relevant organizations and individuals, there was little to no public documentation or discussion from the engineering community found. Discussion that was found is included in this study, but the lack of connection between conservation and engineering professionals is eminently profound. Therefore, the analysis of studying engineering design considerations additionally studied the relationship between environmental and engineering professionals. Types of research included involves literature analysis of journal articles, reports, project plans for construction, and environmental laws pertinent to wildlife impact.
ContributorsMcMillin, Kaci (Author) / Karwat, Darshan (Thesis director) / Senko, Jesse (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Environmental and Resource Management (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Engineering has historically been dominated by White men. However, in modern history, engineering is becoming more diverse as the opportunity to pursue engineering has become accessible to people of all races and genders. Yet, college ready high school students from nontraditional backgrounds—women, ethnic minorities, first-generation-to-college students, and those with financial need—often lack exposure to engineering, thus reducing their likelihood to pursue a career in this field. To create engineering learning experiences that can be expanded to a traditional high school science classroom, the Young Engineers Shape the World program at Arizona State University was consulted. The Young Engineers Shape the World program encourages women, notably the most underrepresented group in the engineering field, as well as other students of diverse backgrounds, to pursue engineering. The goal of this effort was to create a 3-contact hour chemical engineering based learning experience to help students in grades 10-11 learn about an application of chemical engineering. Using knowledge of chemical engineering, a soil pH testing activity was created, simulating a typical high school chemistry science experiment. In addition to measuring pH, students were asked to build a modern garden that contained a physical barrier that could protect the garden from acid rain while still allowing sunlight to reach the plant. Student feedback was collected in the form of an experience evaluation survey after each experience. Students found that the soil-moisture quality testing and design of a protective barrier was engaging. However, an iterative curriculum redesign-implement-evaluate effort is needed to arrive at a robust chemical engineering based design learning experience.
ContributorsOtis, Timothy Kevin (Author) / Ganesh, Tirupalavanam (Thesis director) / Schoepf, Jared (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
This creative project is a children’s book designed to teach young readers about engineering through a fictional story about a group of children creating a robot for their school’s show-and-tell. The story aims to teach engineering principles to children in a lighthearted and entertaining form, narrating notions such as the design process, prototyping, specialty fields, and repurposing. Other principles such as learning patience, compromise and teamwork are also conveyed throughout the plot details. Small life lessons that transcend the realm of engineering are also embodied throughout. The plot of the story is a young girl who goes to visit her grandfather who is a garage tinkerer with a love of spare parts. He tells her about his job as a robotics engineer, and she loves it. She goes and tells her friends who decide they want to make a robot for show-and-tell at school. The grandfather agrees to help them build a robot and thus the group of kids are walked through the engineering design process, learning new things (and specialization) along the way. The story ends by revealing that the whole story was a flashback the main character was having as she is about to start her first day at an engineering firm.
ContributorsReed, Shelby Marie (Author) / Oberle, Eric (Thesis director) / Williams, Wendy (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Pediatric chronic pain is surprisingly common and impactful, prospectively predicting poorer mental and physical health outcomes. Internalizing symptoms represents one such outcome. It is the most common cluster of symptoms in children, it is related to poorer child functioning, and it has been linked to future functioning/psychopathology. The psychosocial mechanisms through which child pain may impact internalizing have yet to be fully elaborated, but withdrawal from social engagement with peers has been proposed as one possible mechanism. Additionally, sibling relationships may play a role in enhancing or diminishing a child’s social engagement while they are in pain. The current study aimed to examine whether child social engagement at age 8 mediates the relation between child chronic pain at age 8 and internalizing symptoms at age 9. Further, the study tested whether sibling warmth and sibling conflict act as moderators between child chronic pain and child social engagement. The physical and emotional health, quality of sibling relations, and extracurricular social engagement of 491 twin children from 247 families were assessed at age 8 and age 9 via surveys completed by the children’s primary caregivers. Findings showed that child pain at age 8 did not predict lower levels of social engagement, and social engagement did not predict child internalizing at age 9. Sibling warmth, but not conflict, significantly moderated the pain—social engagement relation. Together, these findings indicate that the relation between chronic pain and internalizing functions differently in children than in adults through a variety of cognitive, environmental, and social factors. More longitudinal research in this area will help establish changes in the relation between pain and internalizing from childhood into adulthood.
ContributorsRichards, Nicole Eve (Co-author) / Richards, Nicole (Co-author) / Davis, Mary (Thesis director) / Presson, Clark (Committee member) / Lemery-Chalfant, Kathryn (Committee member) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This thesis aims to incorporate exosomes into an electrospun scaffold for tissue engineering applications. The motivation for this work is to develop an implant to regenerate tissue for patients with laryngeal defects. It was determined that it is feasible to incorporate exosomes into an electrospun scaffold. This addition of exosomes does alter the scaffold properties, by decreasing the average fiber diameter by roughly a factor of three and increasing the average modulus by roughly a factor of two. Cells were cultured on a scaffold with exosomes incorporated and were found to proliferate more than on a scaffold alone. This research lays the groundwork for further developing and optimizing an electrospun scaffold with exosomes incorporated to elicit a tissue regenerative response.
ContributorsKennedy, Maeve (Author) / Pizziconi, Vincent (Thesis director) / McPhail, Michael (Committee member) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
With the ongoing development of simulation technology, classic barriers to social interactions are beginning to be dismantled. One such exchange is encapsulated within education—instructors can use simulations to make difficult topics more manageable and accessible to students. Within simulations that include virtual humans, however, there are important factors to consider. Participants playing in virtual environments will act in a way that is consistent with their real-world behaviors—including their implicit biases. The current study seeks to determine the impact of virtual humans’ skin tone on participants’ behaviors when applying engineering concepts to simulated projects. Within a comparable study focused on a medical training simulation, significantly more errors and delays were made when working for the benefit of dark-skinned patients in a virtual context. In the current study, participants were given a choose-your-own-adventure style game in which they constructed simulated bridges for either a light- ordark-skinned community, and the number of errors and time taken for each decision was tracked. Results are expected to be consistent with previous study, indicating a higher number of errors and less time taken for each decision, although these results may be attenuated by a
lack of time pressure and urgency to the given situations. If these expected results hold, there may be implications for both undergraduate engineering curriculum and real-world engineering endeavors.
lack of time pressure and urgency to the given situations. If these expected results hold, there may be implications for both undergraduate engineering curriculum and real-world engineering endeavors.
ContributorsEldemire, Kate (Author) / Craig, Scotty D. (Thesis director) / Roscoe, Rod D. (Committee member) / Engineering Programs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05