This repository houses all MATLAB-related content developed for the course Statics and Mechanics of Materials 1 at the University of Pittsburgh, taught by Dr. Matthew Barry. This repository is developed and maintained entirely by myself, Natan Herzog, as part of my fulfillment of the Chancellors Undergraduate Teaching Fellowship through the Frederick Honors College.
The motivation for this project stems from the immense power in learning basic computation. As both a student and an instructor, I have seen many students opt to do repetitive, sometimes complicated calcluations by hand, rather than using a computational tool like MATLAB or Python. MATLAB has been an extremely beneficial tool for me in all of the following courses, in addition to my research:
| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ENGR 0711 | ENGR 0135 | MEMS 1028 | MEMS 1047 |
| ENGR 0712 | ENGR 0145 | MEMS 1014 | MEMS 1053 |
| MEMS 0031 | MEMS 1041 | ||
| MEMS 0051 | |||
| MEMS 1015 | |||
| PHYS 1331 |
The content developed in this repository builds upon the foundations of computation introduced in the first-year curriculum and frames MATLAB as a powerful tool for solving engineering problems, rather than just another coding language. Ultimately, everything in engineering can be done without learning to use tools like MATLAB, but our work as engineers is simultaneously significantly easier and less prone to mistakes when we do utilize computation.
The purpose of my fellowship this semester is to create a comprehensive MATLAB lesson plan in the context of solving introductory static-structural problems. I hope that my content will help students learn to apply computation to engineering problems and that they find it useful in later classes, as I have.
I believe the best way to learn how to code is to simply do things. As it turns out, many problems in this course can be solved with relatively simple computations. Fundamental concepts in programming like for loops and if statements will be introduced as they become relevant, but I assume that students are either comfortable with them or can use the internet to fill in those gaps.
Instead of focusing on that, I will directly solve statics problems to demonstrate how much simpler and faster it is to use MATLAB than to do it by hand.
In this manner, we will gradually build a level of comfort with things like:
- creating and running custom MATLAB Scripts
- solving systems of equations
- simple structural loading / stress analysis
- iterative design optimization
It is my hope that those students who choose to engage with my content throughout the semester will be comfortable with tackling the development of a relatively robust MATLAB model for their bridge designs when we reach the final project near the end of the term.