Lessons
Putting More Mechanics into Mechanical Engineering
The syllabus didn't quite work, but there were plenty of teachable moments.
Greg Kress knew there was a lot he didn't know. He just didn't know how much he didn't know. He found out during a spring quarter mechanical engineering class that failed to revive a 1962 Cadillac de Ville, but brought to life an era of technology and culture that put students in the mindset of craftsman carmakers.
Kress, MS '09, a PhD candidate working as an instructor under the direction of acting assistant professor Martin Steinert, turned his late grandfather's long dormant Caddy into a hands-on lesson about the sort of basic mechanics that he had never learned—like exactly how a brake works. Nine students enlisted to share his quest into mechanical anthropology, but it turned out that everyone drastically underestimated the challenge, which proved to be much more expensive and vastly more difficult than anticipated.
For an illustrated tour, see the PDF.
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