Instructional Small Scale Gear and Linkage Mechanism

Overview

---

Goals

One of the biggest problem faced by students learning rotational kinematics is the inability to ‘imagine’ the real rotating motion. Despite the abundance of documented demonstration available over the internet, students still have the tendency to touch and observe the motion in real time condition. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a learning method that can actively involve students in its process. Quality of learning depends not only on the form of how the process is carried out but also on what content is taught and how the content is presented. Demonstration is an active and constructive learning approach. It is considered as an interesting process that can be used to illustrate a concept and to draw students’ attention and motivation because demonstration make it visible and clear. It can assist the students in developing their conceptual understanding and connect the concept with their real lives. Hence, an interactive demonstration can be the solution for such problems.

Learning Objectives

The first learning objective is to outline an activity sequence designed to address students’ difficulties as well as to help students acquire the elements of an explanatory model for the complex phenomena involved in rotational motion. In general, the sequence proceeds through a combination of real experiments and interactive computer simulations, designed to sustain students’ understanding. Therein, lies one of the novelties of this problem. Finally, the effectiveness of the activity sequence in promoting students’ reflection on basic rotational dynamics is evaluated based on the experimental activity (demonstration apparatus, theoretical analysis, simulations, pre and post demo test) and responses (concept acquisition).

Context

This problem helps students to understand the concept of dynamics in engineering systems, and students will be able to analyse and solve the problems of kinematics and kinetics of rigid body in the engineering system.