Philadelphia Water–WHYY Show 4/26/2012

According to Mr. William Taylor, our host for the site visit this Friday, there is a show on WHYY-TV this afternoon (Thursday) “called “Green City Clean Waters” about Philadelphia’s efforts with water management. Your students may be interested.”

Week-4 Lab Locations and Times

This week we’ll be touring the Rec Center AND having time in the lab to address the calculation assignment of the week.  You should plan to be involved the whole two hours of your lab period.

Note that we will meet outside the East entrance to the Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building (inside if raining).  Here’s a map showing where we’ll meet and where we’ll go.

Wear flat shoes (NOT heels) – we’ll walk on sensitive surfaces.

Times and locations

Lab	Last Name	Time	Location	2nd Hour
060	A-J	10:00	Papadakis ISB	CAT-167
060	K-Z	10:00	CAT-167	Papadakis ISB
061	A-N	12:00	Papadakis ISB	CAT-167
061	O-Z	12:00	CAT-167	Papadakis ISB

Question: 

 As an A.E. major I'm extremely interested in broadening my skill set using Revit. I found myself wanting to accomplish a lot more with my house design project but I constantly found myself limited to my current knowledge of the program. I found your video guide to be extremely helpful for completing the bare bones of this project but beside youtube tutorials can you recommend any faculty or guides that I could go to for advice?

Response: 

 Autodesk has provided vast amounts of useful information. Here are resources I recommend:

• Start with the help built-in to Revit. It is very good in my experience, with links to much more info 
• The student site where you can download the program should have links on it to the many other sources 
• The magazine Cadalyst website has been very helpful for discussions.

BBVista Uploading Attachments Bug

A student sent me this warning about uploading files to BBVista.

"..when I loaded the submission page the "attach from your documents" icon didn't load. thankfully my freind showed me that the link was still there(so if you click where the icon should be it loads) but i assumed someone else might not have friends who know how to get around this issue."

L1 Lab Questions

Question 1

My first issue is with rounding, I was wondering if we need to use the "=round(.....),3" format, or if we would have points taken off for formatting the cells to go to a certain number of decimal places.

Response

You may use either “round” or you may format the cell.  Either is valid.

 

Question 2

I am unable to find online how to command a function to go to scientific notation so I was again wondering if I could just format the cell to be calculated in scientific notation.

Response

You can force a cell to display in scientici notation in (windows) Excel as follows

• Home Tab on Ribbon
• Format in cells group
• Format Cells when that submenu opens
• Number tab in the dialog box that opens
• Scientific choice from the category

 

Question 3

how exact you would like our values that we are using for the conversion factors such as; 39 inches per meter or if you would rather it be a more exact number with decimal places.

Response

You should use a conversion accuracy that is at least one significant digit greater than your least accurate input, preferrably more.  ie. if your least accurate input had 2 significant digits you’d use 3 digits at least – in fact I’d normally use two extra digits at least.

 

Question 4

where might I be able to find the different formulas for questions 4 and 5.

Response

We believe that we’ve given you enough information, especially when you check the units of your answers, to work out the formula.  Treat it as a word problem and figure it out.

As I explained in the section I attended, it helps for the air problem to image a 1-cubic foot box of air.  You can calculate it’s weight, then calculate the heat necessary to raise it’s temperature one degree F, then calculate the amount necessary to raise it’s heat sufficient to raise the temperature 20 deg F.  The rest should hopefully be straightforward, watching the time units carefully.

Significant Digits

Question:

For the lab report that is due on Friday, for the calculations, what is the amount of desired significant figures. I know for one part we were told to use 3, but I just to make sure that 3 is wanted for the entire report. If you can shed any light on this I would appreciate it.

Response:

We’re asking you to identify the number of significant digits in each of your calculations.  Remember that you determine that number from examining the inputs and choosing the input with the least number of significant digits.

We’ll accept an additional digit when performing unit conversions.  For example if converting 181cm to inches we’d accept either 71.3 or 71.26 although the strict interpretation would be only 71.3.

Remember that in conversions you can assume the conversion factor is accurate to as many digits as needed.  e.g.  turning 1 meter into cm you could consider 1 meter = 100.0000000 cm with all those zeros after the decimal point being significant.  Therefore it’s the actual measurement that determines the number of significant digits.

The Wikipedia explanation is pretty good.

What is AE - Grader's Comment

Caroline Edwards-Mack, an AE senior, is the grader for the discussions. Here's what she sent me after reading your first group of submissions. I heartily agree with her sentiments, though I'm not upset. I hope that the lectures and labs in this course will expand your understanding of all the disciplines in our department.

I just wanted to touch base and let you know what I've observed from grading the discussions so far. Although still valid, most of the students have been exclusive to structural topics when posting this week about AE. There were only a handful that touched on other aspects such as acoustics, building materials, and water and plumbing usage. While they overlap with mechanical, I found it interesting that students seem to be equating architectural engineering directly with structural design. I know the other topics will be covered separately in the course, but I keep finding myself responding to "In conclusion, architectural engineers make sure the buildings stand up" and I think it's important that the students to realize it's a little more than that.

Guidance for Discussion Posts

Caroline Edwards-Mack, the grader for the discussion posts provided, the following advice in the fall for what she’s expecting.

---

While grading the discussions, I am noticing that the majority of the students are simply summarizing what their chosen articles say rather than weighing their personal input into the discussion thread. The purpose of these assignments to identify what the student finds the most interesting and what they are confused about, rather than reiterating the information contained in the articles? If I wanted to know what the articles said, I would just read them myself.

The interesting/confusing discussions should also be kept within the realm of the weekly topic. For example, being interested in the color of a building when looking at the structural engineering aspect is not relevant.

Also, I am finding that most students are not addressing the weekly special question directly. We suggest the following format to the class? This would make grading the discussions much easier, as well as increase the grades for the students.

First Article Title, Author, Hyperlink, etc.

• A very brief (2-3 sentences) identification of the article’s subject
• 1 paragraph (3-4 sentences) about what you found the most interesting about the article
• 1 paragraph (3-4 sentences) about what you found the most confusing about the article

Second Article Title, Author, Hyperlink, etc.

• A very brief (2-3 sentences) identification of the article’s subject
• 1 paragraph (3-4 sentences) about what you found the most interesting about the article
• 1 paragraph (3-4 sentences) about what you found the most confusing about the article

Special Question

• 3-4 sentences directly addressing the weekly question

 

Example of Good Post

Below is an example with her comments about a very good discussion post

---

Week 9 – Topic: Environmental Modeling

Post by xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Article 1:

Charles J. Newell, John A. Connor, "Risk-based environmental restoration," in AccessScience, ©McGraw-Hill Companies, 2001, http://www.accessscience.com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu

· Clear identification of the source.

In this article Newell, details the new industry standard for environmental cleanup, which is the risk-based corrective action approach. This approach as the name implies details the mitigation of risk of environmental cleanup and most importantly on the limiting of further contamination. This approach focuses on assessing a site’s parameters, figuring out the an exposure assessment which is the identification of the exposure pathways, the risk/cleanup standard calculation which is a model of contaminant levels decline pending on action taken, and lastly the response action.

· Thorough and concise summary of what the article discussed in 3-4 sentences. The grader of the discussion post should not have to re-read the article to understand what the student is talking about in the remainder of the post. A short summary outlining the key points is ideal. This allows the grader to focus on the subject the student is discussing, and also shows that the student read and understands the article. This summary should not be a direct copy of what the article says, but rather the student’s abridged interpretation after reading it.

The most interesting part of the article was the risk/cleanup standard calculation part of the RBCA approach. It is the most fascinating part of the article because it requires engineers to make detailed models of the contamination site where they model the different parameters such as contaminant pathways and lists of accepted exposure factors.

· Brief, but direct explanation of what the student found most interesting about the article. In a few sentences, the student should identify which part they found most interesting and, more importantly, why they found it interesting. Common answers like “It was all interesting” or “The part about the calculations was interesting” are not sufficient.

The most confusing part of this article was when Newell details how engineers create the contamination pathways and more importantly how they determine how much contamination levels decline between the source and the receptor. In addition I wonder how accurate their measurements are for contaminates at the sub-soil level.

· Similarly, a brief but direct explanation of what the student found to be the most confusing part of the article should be addressed in a few sentences. Again, the reason the student found some parts confusing is more important than which parts they found confusing. A very common response was “Nothing confused me.” These are very advanced scholarly articles, so it is rare that the student would understand it completely. If there is nothing confusing, the student should elaborate on what further research they would be interested in. In this example, the student does both; he identified the confusing part of the article in detail, and also discussed a parameter he was curious about.

Article 2: **Responses same as above

Daniel Vallero, Alan Huber, Paul Lioy, "Dispersion modeling in complex urban systems," in AccessScience, ©McGraw-Hill Companies, 2008, http://www.accessscience.com.ezproxy2.library.drexel.edu

· Clear identification of the second source.

In this article Vallero discusses the various models used in the environmental cleanup industry. Although Vallero details three different models, the physical models, the numerical models, and the Urban Dispersion program he focuses mostly on the Urban Dispersion model. The Urban Dispersion model overviews how air flows in an urban environment and is used mostly to provide data to improve airflow around an urban environment and how to create safe city in case of any dispersal of air pollutants.

· Thorough and concise summary of what the article discussed in 3-4 sentences. The grader of the discussion post should not have to re-read the article to understand what the student is talking about in the remainder of the post. A short summary outlining the key points is ideal. This allows the grader to focus on the subject the student is discussing, and also shows that the student read and understands the article. This summary should not be a direct copy of what the article says, but rather the student’s abridged interpretation after reading it.

The most interesting part of this article was they detailed a hypothetical scenario of air flow in Madison Square Garden. Although they used technical jargon it was interesting to see how engineers model these systems. I was most interested in how many people got exposed over such and such contaminant levels. It is really intriguing to see how quickly people can get exposed based on the various durations of the contaminant exposures.

· Brief, but direct explanation of what the student found most interesting about the article. In a few sentences, the student should identify which part they found most interesting and, more importantly, why they found it interesting. Common answers like “It was all interesting” or “The part about the calculations was interesting” are not sufficient.

The most confusing part of this article was how they collected data on these air-flows. The article details the sampling approach used by the NYC UDP. When they sampled the airflow in NYC they used wind-sampling instruments in and around the sampling location. I understand how they collected the airflow data for outside but how does one model how an air pollutant or contaminate affects the occupants of a building. From what we learned from the last week discussion about indoor air quality is that air is often pulled from outside to cycle in a building. How does the model reflect the exposure from this action. I figure since most people in a city are in doors shouldn’t one focus on the contamination levels inside?

· Similarly, a brief but direct explanation of what the student found to be the most confusing part of the article should be addressed in a few sentences. Again, the reason the student found some parts confusing is more important than which parts they found confusing. A very common response was “Nothing confused me.” These are very advanced scholarly articles, so it is rare that the student would understand it completely. If there is nothing confusing, the student should elaborate on what further research they would be interested in. In this example, the student does both; he identified the confusing part of the article in detail, and also identified questions he had about the approach to air pollution monitoring.

Special Question:

From what I gathered from the two articles environmental modeling can be a challenging task. Since an engineer has to model quite a few different parameters such as the site locations geometry and what it consists to the various possible contaminate pathways. In addition they have to model how contaminates move, and how the temperature of the site affects these pathways. Upon this you have to model how these contaminates flow in different mediums, be it water, air, or soil.

· The student effective addressed the special question for the week, “Consider how we sense and model the many aspects of the environment.” Most importantly, his response was on topic, and discussed the approaches to modeling environmental conditions. He tied in his response to what he learned from the articles discussed above, and the obstacles one encounters in this modeling process.

Grader Comment - Overall, the post was well written. It stayed on topic, addressed the requirements, and had no spelling or grammatical errors. It was organized in a clear way:

Week-1 Labs

Labs for Week-1 and Future - Times and Locations

As will be the case for almost all labs EXCEPT the field trips, you'll only be in the lab for one hour.  All will be in the CadLab - CAT-167 (in the teaching half of the lab on the south side of the building - turn right on entering).  The times to come throughout the term are as follows:

Section 060

• 10:00 - Last Names beginning A-J
• 11:00 - Last Names beginning K-Z

Section 061

• 12:00 - Last Names beginning A-N
• 1:00 - Last Names beginning O-Z