The Experimental Methods in Engineering Mechanics course is intended to give an advanced view of experimental methods used to study mechanics problems by way of example. Students will construct significant components of experimental apparatus and collect & interpret the resulting data.

Content

Exceptionally for the Coronavirus, we will only have one module this year - the measurement of the real area of contact. This will involve a detailed introduction to analog electronics, in order to build the necessary apparatus to carry out our measurement. The instruction will closely follow The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill.

About this wiki: all contributions to this wiki are to be used for educational, non-commercial purposes only. Credit to external sources is provided when available.

The syllabus

Reports

Writing is an essential part of this class. Presentation of clear figures and captions goes a long way toward conveying information efficiently. I attach here a document on figure captions for a completely unrelated experiment that summarizes how to include the `essential' information in a figure caption.

The format should follow the Physical Review Letters format, with excercises and wiki contributions provided as an appendix. The format is quite clear, and explained in the presentation from day 1, available here. Other resources include the `authors' document from PRL, available here, and an additional resource available here.

Laboratory activities (main)

The lab exercises and many relevant resources are available at the main lab activities page, located here.