" TV programs such as "Law and Order" show how forensic experts are called upon to give testimony that often determines the outcome of court cases. Engineers are one class of expert who can help display evidence in a new light to solve cases. In this seminar you will be part of the problem-solving process, working through both previously solved and unsolved cases. Each week we will investigate cases, from the facts that make up each side to the potential evidence we can use as engineers to expose culprits. The cases range from disintegrating airplane engines to gas main explosions to Mafia murders. This seminar will be full of discussions about the cases and creative approaches to reaching the solutions. The approach is hands-on so you will have a chance to participate in the process, not simply study it. Some background reading and oral presentation are required."

Students take a hands-on look at the design of bridge piers (columns). First they brainstorm types of loads that might affect a Colorado bridge. Then they determine the maximum possible load for that scenario, and calculate the cross-sectional area of a column designed to support that load. Choosing from clay, foam or marshmallows, they create model columns and test their calculations.

" Here we will learn about the mechanical behavior of structures and materials, from the continuum description of properties to the atomistic and molecular mechanisms that confer those properties to all materials. We will cover elastic and plastic deformation, creep, fracture and fatigue of materials including crystalline and amorphous metals, semiconductors, ceramics, and (bio)polymers, and will focus on the design and processing of materials from the atomic to the macroscale to achieve desired mechanical behavior. We will cover special topics in mechanical behavior for material systems of your choice, with reference to current research and publications."

Phenomenology of mechanical behavior of materials at the macroscopic level. Relationship of mechanical behavior to material structure and mechanisms of deformation and failure. Topics include: elasticity, viscoelasticity, plasticity, creep, fracture, and fatigue. Case studies and examples drawn from a variety of classes of materials including: metals, ceramics, polymers, thin films, composites, and cellular materials.

The paradox of success is you need to embrace failure to achieve it.
This is a paper born out of a speech I gave to 600 17 year olds on entrepreneurship during the UK’s enterprise week in November 2007. It must rank as one of the most nerve jangling speeches I’ve ever done, since owning a teenager of my own I had strong clues that they can be a cynical and challenging audience. However, setting anxiety and cynicism aside, I really wanted to share something of what it takes to successfully invent an innovative new product and commercialise it. The reason for being invited to speak at these events is you’ve supposedly done something successful and the convention is to share this success as if it was the only possible outcome of your company’s brilliance. But something about this teenage audience, over half of whom said they wanted to start their own business, made me abandon convention and share the brutal, unvarnished truth that the essential, hard earned ingredient in successful creativity and entrepreneurship is…failure.
Failure is the essential ingredient that nobody talks about or acknowledges and everyone tries desperately and understandably to avoid. But as any inventor, creative or entrepreneur knows, great ideas are not born perfect but are forged in the furnace of trial and error. As Darwin showed, this is the simple but brutal algorithm of life. This seemingly random but amazingly productive cycle of mutation and natural selection, trial and error, has produced the whole of the abundant diversity of life on earth. Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize winning physicist said about progress in any field, “Mistakes are at the heart of progress, so our challenge as scientists, is how to make more mistakes faster”. Or as I said to my teenage audience, “you’ve spent the last few years being told not to fail by teachers and parents and yet if you really want to create anything genuinely new; you’ve got to start learning how to fail”. Pablo Picasso, who knew a thing or two about originality, had another way of putting it when he said “There’s nothing worse than a great start” having long since learned to celebrate failures and difficulties as key to finding completely new avenues of creative expression.

Interpretations of the concept of probability. Basic probability rules; random variables and distribution functions; functions of random variables. Applications to quality control and the reliability assessment of mechanical/electrical components, as well as simple structures and redundant systems. Elements of statistics. Bayesian methods in engineering. Methods for reliability and risk assessment of complex systems, (event-tree and fault-tree analysis, common-cause failures, human reliability models). Uncertainty propagation in complex systems (Monte Carlo methods, Latin Hypercube Sampling). Introduction to Markov models. Examples and applications from nuclear and chemical-process plants, waste repositories, and mechanical systems. Open to qualified undergraduates.

Students investigate the critical nature of foundations as they learn differences between shallow and deep foundations, including the concepts of bearing pressure and settlement. Using models representing a shallow foundation and a deep pile foundation, they test, see and feel the effects in a cardboard box test bed composed of layers of pebbles, soil and sand. They also make bearing pressure calculations and recommendations for which type of foundations to use in various engineering scenarios.

Students learn about the strength of bones and methods of helping to mend fractured bones. During a class demonstration, a chicken bone is broken by applying a load until it reaches a point of failure (fracture). Then, working as biomedical engineers, students teams design their own splint or cast to help repair a fractured bone, learning about the strength of materials used.