Due: As hardcopy on or before Wednesday, 8May2013 at noon, “under the door” of room 313 Engineering, NAU South Campus
Instructions: Prepare your responses to these exam question as a memo at an acceptable standard-of-practice. Your memo should be structured so that it is obvious which section of the exam one is looking at. Your answers should be concise, but thoughtful and complete. They should reflect upon and demonstrate your attendance and participation in the class. Keep close track of your word counts on those sections that have a limited word count. Read, sign and return the following with your exam: I affirm that I have not discussed the material in this exam with any person, and that the solutions I have turned in are solely the result of my own efforts. I understand that any violation of this affirmation constitutes lapse in academic integrity and can result in a failing grade for the course.
Signed:______________________, Name (printed):_________________Dated:______.
SECTION I: Self Assessment (20 points)
1. Discuss why this class was important to your future as an engineer, what you “took away” from the course and how you anticipate using these skills in the short and long terms. Maximum: 300 words.
SECTION II: Design & Analysis Skills (20 points)
The point has been made on numerous occasions in this class that it is the engineering analysis step of the engineering design process that differentiates engineering design from other design processes. The vast majority of your time in engineering school is dedicated to learning these analysis tools and skills so that they can later be used as an aid in the design of projects that you will encounter in the workplace. Consider the following list of engineering design projects that are typical of some you’d anticipate working on after the completion of one or the other of NAU’s Civil Engineering or Environmental Engineering Programs-of-Study. Choose one project from “Both,” plus one more, depending on your major, from either the Environmental or Civil projects, and answer the following:
Both
a. Match each project with upper division CENE course(s) from your Program- of-Study, where you anticipate learning the analysis skills that you’ll need to generate an “engineered design” on that project, and
b. provide a brief description of what needs to be “analyzed” and how (be specific, find and write out appropriate expression(s)) – cite the course description, if and when appropriate, to show that the class matches the analysis skill you’ll need for that given project.
c. If you find more than one applicable course, list them in priority order.
1. Size and recommend for purchase, a pump to manage a water distribution system. 2. Design the earth fill sub-grade and foundation pad for a mine’s heap leach ore pad, including environmental provisions for ground and surface water protection from the
1pad’s chemicals. 3. Size the culverts needed to handle the storm water produced by a specific flood event. Environmental Engineering 1. Perform a human health risk assessment for the population of a small mining town
impacted by metals contamination in the town’s soil, surface and ground water, air
and homes. 2. Recommend either an aerobic or anaerobic digester for a composting facility. 3. Design a sampling system to obtain PM2.5, PM10, semi-volatiles and volatile
compounds in the air in the urban core of a city in China.
Civil Engineering
1. Design and size the primary load bearing members of a multi-story structure. 2. Lay-out a highway within a StateDOT’s established right-of-way. 3. Recommend an appropriate foundation system for a condominium tower on a coastal
barrier island on the Gulf coast of Texas.
Maximum: 500 words.
SECTION II: Design & Analysis Skills, continued (20 points)
Pick one of the two design problems, below. For your selection, provide the following: 1. Write as complete problem statement for the design challenge. Maximum: 500
words.
2. List 2 types of technical analyses you will perform to evaluate your design options. a. A landowner in northern Arizona wants to build a house that is “off the grid.” They have been retained you to design a cistern system to capture rainwater as
the home’s only drinking water source. b. A traffic intersection on a college campus becomes congested during the
period between classes with both vehicle and pedestrian traffic. You and your firm are retained to design an alternative to the present system of traffic/pedestrian signals at this intersection so that the congestion is reduced or mitigated.
SECTION III: The Roots of and Impacts of Engineering on Society (20 points)
Limit your short answers to the one or two primary impacts. 1. Prehistoric:
a. (2 pts) One of the largest impacts of stone tools was that they allowed for the development of many other inventions that made life easier for people. Present and discuss two (2) innovations that came from stone tools.
b. (2 pts) What was the primary SOCIAL/CULTURAL impact seen by the use of stone tools and WHY?
2. Age of Superstition: a. (2 pts) Looking only at the Roman ROAD, discuss 4 impacts from amongst
the following: ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, POLITICAL/MILITARY,
COMMUNICATIONS, or COMMERCE. 3. Industrial Age: Steam Engine, Railroads, Internal Combustion (IC) Engines,
Highway Systems
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a. (2 pts) Discuss CULTURAL impact of the US interstate highway system. b. (2 pts) Discuss CULTURAL impact of the IC engine. c. (2 pts) Discuss ENVIRONMENTAL impact of the IC engine. d. (2 pts) Discuss SOCIAL, CULTURAL, or ECONOMIC impacts of the Steam
Engine/ US Railroads. 4. Post-Industrial Age: Nuclear Energy and Weapons, Computers, Internet, Green
Movement. a. (2 pts) Discuss ECONOMIC impacts of the advent of alternative/renewable
energy. b. (2 pts) Discuss HEALTH/ENVIRONMENTAL impact of the use of nuclear
energy. c. (2 pts) Discuss HEALTH/EDUCA TION, ECONOMIC, or
SOCIAL/LEISURE impacts of the Internet.
SECTION III: Impacts of Engineering on Society, continued (20 points)
You have made and participated in the discussions arising from numerous presentations on the evolution and impacts of ingenuity, innovation, and technical development for four periods, known as; prehistoric, the age of superstition, the industrial age, and the post industrial age. Maximum: 500 words in total for questions 1. through 4.
1. Discuss the primary need or needs that were being addressed in each period. 2. Discuss the evolution and codification of the engineering design process over the course of these four periods. What kind of societal entities became involved in the
process, at what junctures in history, and why. 3. During the industrial age, we began to develop technology that was no longer “all
positive.” We were now engineering technology, processes and facilities that had both good and bad outcomes. Discuss how society can and should decide whether the “good outweighs the bad” in the course of technological development as we move forward, into the future.
4. With the advent of the personal computing, the internet, PDA’s, and social media during the post-industrial age, we were now developing technology that does not address one or more of the fundamental human needs for shelter, food and clean water, sanitation, transportation, and security. It was a profound change to the paradigms that had driven technical development up until that time. Discuss what you feel will be the next BIG change to the human paradigm of “need” that will drive technical development into the future and how soon it will appear. i.e. in the next 10 or so years, the next hundred years, or maybe more. If computing and PDA’s were a “game changer,” what’s the next one. Answer specifically and answer how you anticipate interacting, as both an engineer and a citizen.
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