University of Mary Engineering Newsletter - Fall 2018

Engineering Quarterly VOL.I. . . No.1

W ELCOME TO THE FIRST ISSUE !

By TERRY PILLING

This is the inaugural issue of a newsletter we will periodically release to keep our friends and former students informed about events happening around the University of Mary Engineering School, as well as the events in the community our students are involved in. We plan to adopt a slightly different format from the typical ‘newsletter’ in that not only will we tell you what we are up to and what we have planned, but we also include activities for the reader! We assume that if you are reading our newsletter it is likely that you are either an engineer or you are an engineering student.

This means that you want more than just a bunch of facts; you want mental challenges as well! So we plan to provide you with both.

This issue begins with a summary of where we are in the design and development of the University of Mary Engineering School, along with an introduction to our current faculty and a brief history of how it all started three years ago. We follow this with news from the summer, including some of the internships and projects our students were involved in, a word from the Engineering Club, and articles from each of the branches of engineering that we currently offer. We discuss the number of students in each major, what we have done lately to improve the program and the facilities, and we also include some of the problems that our students have solved in their classes and which the reader may wish to try their hand at if they are so inclined. It might take you back to those good old days as an engineering student, when you loved nothing more than to spend hours upon hours, day, night, and weekends, studying and solving homework problems one after the other while your friends were out having fun.

Finally, we have included some other interesting problems and puzzles, including a KenKen puzzle, and an unsolved math problem.

Thanks for being a part of our engineering community!

C URRENT FACULTY The School of Engineering has seven full time faculty and five adjunct faculty and is currently conducting a search to hire six more full time faculty, one to start in January of 2019 and the other five to start in the fall of 2019. The current faculty are as follows: Terry Pilling: Terry earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering

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Physics/Mathematics at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada in 1995, and his Master of Science in Nuclear Physics at the Saskatchewan Accelerator Laboratory in 1998 with research on the near threshold photoproduction of π-mesons and chiral perturbation theory. Terry completed his Ph.D. in High Energy Particle Physics at NDSU in 2002 with dissertation “Gauge Torsion Gravity, String Theory, and Antisymmetric Tensor Interactions.” He then worked as Scientific Editor at House of Knowledge Publishing Company in London in 2002, before going to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Russia in 2003 as a research associate. He was a professor at NDSU from 2004 to 2008 and then joined Crownbutte Windpower, Inc., as its Chief Operations Officer until 2014 when he returned to teach at NDSU. In 2015 Terry joined the University of Mary to help start the new engineering program and is currently the Director of the Engineering program at Mary.

Eric Garcia: Eric earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from California State University, Long Beach, in 2012, and his Ph.D. in Architectural Engineering (with emphasis on Structural) from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in 2016 with dissertation “Identifying the Onset, Type, and Location of Deterioration in Reinforced Concrete Using Ultrasonic Testing.” Eric then continued his research as a postdoctoral research associate until he joined the University of Mary as a Civil Engineering professor in the Fall of 2017.

Anthony Waldenmaier: Anthony earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from North Dakota State University in 2009 and his Ph.D. (pending dissertation) in Civil and Environmental Engineering – Transportation Materials from NDSU. Anthony also earned a Graduate Certificate in Statistics from NDSU in 2012 and he joined University of Mary Engineering as a Civil Engineering professor in the Fall of 2017.

Nancy Kelly: Nancy earned her Bachelors of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island in 1985, her Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 with research on the use of acoustic and syntactic information for continuously spoken letter recognition, and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 with doctoral dissertation entitled “Acoustic-Phonetic and Linguistic Analyses of Spontaneous Speech: Implications for Speech Understanding.” From 1994 until 2000 she worked with Voice Processing Corporation which then merged with Voice Control Systems and was later acquired by Philips Electronics. From 2000 until 2017 Nancy worked as a Speech Technology consultant and also a private tutor and then joined the University of Mary as an Electrical Engineering professor in the Fall of 2018.

Rodrigo da Costa Aparecido: Rodrigo

University of Mary

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earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in electronics in 2009 from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. He followed this with six years as a maintenance engineer with Baker-Hughes in Brazil. Rodrigo joined Mary Engineering in 2017 as our Laboratory Coordinator and instructor. Rodrigo also recently completed his MBA from the University of Mary in 2018 and is now also in charge of purchasing for the Engineering School.

Anthony (A.J.) Garcia: A.J. earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the California State University at Long Beach in 2012, followed by his Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014. He got his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 2018 with dissertation “Millipede Inspired Locomotion for Rumen Monitoring Remotely Operated Vehicle.” A.J. joined the University of Mary as a Mechanical Engineering professor in the Fall of 2018.

James (Jim) Carrico: Jim earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada in Reno in 2006, followed by a Master of Arts in Catholic Studies from the University of Saint Thomas in Saint Paul, MN, in 2011. Jim then got his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City in 2018 with dissertation “3D Printing, Design and Motion Control of IPMCs with Applications in Soft Robots.” Jim joined the University of Mary as a Mechanical Engineering professor in the Fall of 2018.

Joseph Stuart: Joseph Stuart earned his undergraduate degree in History from Franciscan University of Steubenville and his Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh with dissertation “Christopher Dawson in Context: A Study in British Intellectual History between the World Wars.” Joseph is a History professor at the University of Mary and Fellow in Catholic Studies. Joseph also has a degree in land surveying from Ferris State University and has worked in surveying in Michigan and in North Dakota. Joseph has taught our Civil Engineering Surveying course at Mary Engineering since the Fall of 2017.

Charles (Wes) Dickhut: Wes earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Geological Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines in 1993 and his Master of Science in Geological Engineering from the University of Idaho in 1999 where his research focused on the incorporation of uncertainty and spatial variability into geotechnical engineering analysis. Wes is a professional engineer in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming (formerly also licensed in New York, Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky) and his work experience includes Knight Piesold and Co in Denver, Colorado, from 1993 to 1994, the US Army CHPPM-Europe in Landstuhl, Germany, from 1994 to 1997, ATC Associates in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1999 to 2001,

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BBC&M Engineering, Inc., Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as Cincinnati State Community College from 2001 to 2005, John P. Stopen Engineering, Syracuse, New York from 2005 to 2013, and Braun Intertec Corporation in Bismarck from 2013 to present. Wes has taught our Soil Science Lab course as well as our Earth Dynamics and Geophysics course here at Mary Engineering since the Fall of 2017.

Daniel Barr: Daniel earned his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry in 2006 from Barret Honors College followed by his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Arizona State University in 2011. Daniel then went to Utica College from 2011 until 2016 as a biochemistry professor until joining the University of Mary Chemistry department in 2016. In addition to his responsibilities as Chemistry professor, Daniel has designed and taught the Mechanical Engineering Thermodynamics course for the Mary Engineering School since the Fall of 2017.

Bob Willenbring: Bob earned his Bachelors degree in Mathematics from St. John’s University in Collegeville, MN, in 2005 with dissertation “RNA secondary structure, permutations, and statistics,” and his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Michigan State University in 2011. Bob has been at the University of Mary since 2011 and is currently the Chair of the Mathematics Department. Bob has taken numerous courses in computer programming, computer algorithms, and computer theory, as well as numerical analysis. Bob is fluent in computer languages such as C, C++, Java, Excel, Matlab, LATEX , etc., and has used this experience to design our ENR 200 Computing for Mathematics and Engineering course which he teaches every Fall semester.

Patrick Kelly: Patrick earned is Bachelor of Science degree in Physics at the University of Waterloo and both his Master of Science and his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Toronto specializing in theoretical high-energy/particle physics and gravitation/cosmology. Patrick did postdoctoral stints in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Cambridge, MA before accepting a faculty position at the North Dakota State University. Patrick then joined Ave Maria College in Michigan and then Ave Maria University in Florida before joining the University of Mary in 2017. Patrick teaches our Engineering Physics courses and is also designing upper year Physics and Engineering courses as well as Laboratories and a future Physics minor.

A B RIEF H ISTORY OF E NGINEERING AT M ARY

By TERRY PILLING

The University of Mary School of Engineering was conceived as part of the Vision 2030 plan for the university. Vision 2030 is a capital campaign that was announced in Terry 2015 and defines three phases of construction and development over 15 years. The reader can find numerous articles on the University of Mary website that outline the milestones that have already been

Engineering Quarterly FALL 2018 achieved and the new construction that has been completed since then. The final piece of Phase 1 of the Vision 2030 plan is the construction of a School of Engineering.

I was hired by the University of Mary in 2015 to help with the design and development of the new Engineering School. One of the first things I did after joining the team was to take a trip to Grand Forks with Dr. David Fleischacker, the dean of the college of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Jodi Roller, the dean of the School of Health Sciences, and Dr. Diane Fladeland, the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Together we met with the faculty from the University of North Dakota School of Engineering and set up a memorandum of understanding. This meant that our engineering students could take courses at the University of Mary as well as courses online from UND and they would all count toward degrees from both the University of Mary and the University of North Dakota.

This agreement allowed us to develop our program from the beginning, adding courses and faculty as we constructed our laboratories and facilities, while allowing our students to take from UND the courses we had not yet developed. With this agreement in place we had our first group of freshman start their Mary engineering degrees in the fall of 2016.

We then formed a ‘Curriculum Committee,’ which consists of engineers from close to 40 different engineering companies which are active in North Dakota and the nearby states.

These engineers have helped us design our courses and our teaching philosophy so that we teach the skills necessary for our students to be productive and valuable employees from the moment they graduate, requiring far less on the job training than is normally required of new engineering graduates. The committee also helps our students to remain in direct contact with the engineering world leading to valuable internship opportunities and important engineering contacts for their future careers.

Since then, we have hired several new faculty and constructed many new courses and laboratories while continuing to raise money for the new Engineering building, the design phase of which is almost completed, and construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2019. We are adding new courses and constructing new laboratories each semester as the need arises due to our current Junior level students progressing through to their degrees.

When this first group of students graduates in the spring of 2020 we will be finished constructing our building, our laboratories will be fully equipped, and all of our courses will be offered every year after that.

T HE E NGINEERING C LUB

By CALEB WEISGARBER, ENGINEERING CLUB PRESIDENT

Last spring semester was the beginning of our University of Mary Engineering Club.

We keep a constant of about 12 members and members are allowed to be engineering and non engineering majors. Some of the fun things we have done in the past are:

2 • We were able to operate an R/C car using a raspberry pi.

• We began to reconstruct an old motorcycle.

• We volunteered at, and helped run, a local robotics competition.

• We helped teach the OT students how to make simple buttons that they can now make, replacing the expensive buttons that they used to have to buy as an adaptation for special needs children’s toys.

This year we plan to expand as a club, since we have a bigger freshman class of engineering students coming in. We plan to continue with the reconstruction of the motorcycle, volunteer again at robotics, and any other ideas that we will come up with at our first meeting.

We try to make sure we try to do what the members want to do, so we are always open for any ideas.

E NGINEERING 101

By NANCY KELLY

Over this past summer, the Mary Engineering faculty made a number of changes to one of our signature courses, ENR 101: Introduction to Engineering. This class is typically taken by first-semester freshmen Engineering or Construction Management majors and is designed to help them decide which branch of Engineering or Construction Management is the right one for them.

The course now includes not only the popular “Engineering Careers” sessions, in which industry professionals are invited to come and speak to the class and share details about their personal work experiences, but also overviews of various engineering disciplines, résumé creation, computer-aided design (CAD), spreadsheets, as well as oral technical presentations.

Thus far, students and speakers alike have been enthusiastic about the course, which is being team-taught by the entire Engineering faculty. The involvement of all Engineering faculty members is consistent with the personal approach of the Mary Engineering program. This involvement permits ENR 101 students to get to know faculty, and vice versa, right away. Students are encouraged to seek out faculty for advice and mentoring. Some are already doing so, which will surely help them make their major and career decisions with more confidence.

Even those students who later decide to major in something other than engineering will still find their experience in ENR 101 a valuable one where the skills they gain in spreadsheets, résumés, CAD, and public speaking, are sure to come in handy in any career they happen to choose.

The lineup of invited speakers for the Fall, 2018, session of the ENR 101 course are as follows: September 17: Scott Schuh, Director of Engineering Strategy at Bobcat/Doosan.

September 19: Kevin Allen, Director of Career Services at University of Mary.

October 08: Tom Atkinson, Western Area Power Association.

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October 10: Clyde Eisenbeis, Electrical Engineer from 3M and the Navy.

November 28: Tom Neigum, Director of Aviation Services, KLJ Engineering.

December 03: Evan Anderson, Mad Scientist, Gizmonics.

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• The game begins when the referee throws to try (the answers are at the back) from their the ball into the center of the pit. sophomore Circuits course.

• When the ball enters the pit, the players scream ‘GA’ for the first two bounces, and ‘GO’ on the third bounce, after which the ball is live.

• Once the ball is live, any player can hit the ball with an open or closed hand.

G AG A BALL P IT

By ANTHONY WALDENMAIER

Every year the students at the University of Mary have a Day of Service where they go out into the surrounding community and

• If a ball touches a player below the knee (even if the player hits himself or herself) he or she is out and leaves the pit. If a player is hit above the knees, the play continues.

• If a ball is caught on a fly, the player who hit the ball is out.

Find the voltages

• Using the walls of the octagon to aid in jumping is legal as long as the player does The first is a resistor network with various not permanently sit on the ledge of the oc- sources and the object is to find the voltages tagon.

V0 , V∆ , and Vc the voltage at node c. The second is an operational amplifier with a T feed• Players cannot hold the ball. back network and the goal is to find an ex• If needed, a second ball can be thrown in the pression for the output voltage in terms of the pit to expedite the end of the game. The last input voltage and the resistors. player standing is the winner of that round.

Helpful elementary school kids spend the day serving the people and businesses. The Day of Service is a student driven initiative and it is intended to promote community and foster leadership. It involves over 1,300 volunteers and the activities range from everything to raking leaves and cleaning up garbage to organizing clothing and food donations.

This year, the engineering students and faculty spent the day of service constructing a GaGa Ball Pit at the Apple Creek Elementary

Prof. Waldenmaier setting the first post School near Bismarck. On the morning of October 10th we got post-hole diggers, sandbags, and other tools and then purchased the 4×4’s, 1 × 6’s, and other materials from the lumber yard. We then went to the elementary school and constructed the octagonal GaGa Ball Pit. Gaga ball is a game where everyone goes into the arena with a single ball. If the ball touches you below the knee you are out and

E LECTRICAL E NGINEERING There are currently 19 students enrolled in Electrical Engineering of which eight are Juniors, three are Sophomores, and eight are freshman. We have three faculty teaching EE courses and there is a search in progress to hire two more to start in the fall of 2019.

Over the past summer we constructed several new laboratory spaces for electrical engineering and we purchased quite a bit of equipment for the fall 2018 and spring 2019 courses. We have a computer lab with close to 30 workstations running Arch linux and with various software packages installed such as Spice, FreeCAD, Octave (MatLab), QGIS, QUCS circuit simulator, VIM, LATEX, and compilers for a multitude of computer programming languages, among many other things. We also have 6 electronics stations which include Tek-

Find an expression for Vo The problem we present below is Problem 1 from Midterm Exam 3 of their sophomore level Circuits II course. These are typical of the type of problem they are expected to solve on an exam. For the second problem, please take note of the exam instructions! The correct answer is only worth partial points – engineering students need to explain in detail how to get the answer. They need to write it as a set of step-by-step instructions to the reader in order to get full points:

Linear Electric Circuits Midterm Exam 03 • You have 2.5 hours to complete this exam.

• This exam is CLOSED BOOK and CLOSED NOTES. Your tools are blank paper, a pen, and your brain.

Electronics Stations

• You may NOT use a calculator on this exam. Reduce your answers to the lowest fractional form.

• Your work should be done on an engineertronix oscilloscopes, arbitrary waveform gening pad. erators, 3-channel power supplies, benchtop digital multimeters, computers, and all kinds • Hand in a neat version of your answers and of breadboarding tools and soldering equipnot rough work. ment. These stations will allow our electrical engineering students to build circuits, analyze • In order to get full points you need to orgacircuits, and study datasheets while solving nize all of your steps so that someone can electrical engineering problems and designeasily follow the logic. Use words when ing projects. The Electrical Engineering deGaGa Ball Pit necessary to clarify what you are doing. partment will continue to acquire new equipmust leave the pit and the last one in the pit ment each semester to equip new laboratories as new courses are added to the schedule each Problem 1: For the circuit shown in Figure wins. Here are the ‘semi-official rules’: semester.

1, the switch has been in position a for a long For you electrical engineers out there, we time and then, at t = 0 the switch moves instanta• All players start with one hand touching a wall of the pit. give a few example problems you might like neously to position b. Find V0 (t) for t ≥ 0.

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Figure 1 Steps you need to show for full points: • Reduce the entire circuit into an equivalent RLC circuit.

• Find the differential equation • Solve the characteristic equation • Decide whether it is underdamped, overdamped, or critically damped.

• Solve the differential equation.

• Write the solution in as simple form as possible function of t with no unknown constants.

sheet metal brake, four 3-D printers, a lathe, chop saw, CNC machine, as well as a number of other instruments and tools. The Mechanical Engineering department will continue to acquire new equipment each semester to equip new laboratories as new courses are added to the schedule each semester.

Here are a few problems that our Mechanical Engineering students are required to solve in their various courses that you might also like to try.

Dynamics Problem: Large freight trains accelerate very slowly. Suppose one such train accelerates from rest, giving its 0.350mradius wheels an angular acceleration of 0.250rad/s2 . After the wheels have made 200 revolutions (assume no slippage): (a) How far has the train moved down the track? (b) What are the final angular velocity of the wheels and the linear velocity of the train?

Statics Problem: Determine the forces in members AB, BD, and CD of the truss shown

• Sketch the solution (so that if I Gnuplot it I will get the same thing as your sketch).

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of Braun Intertec. Topics of this course center around mechanical soil testing and an over view of other civil engineering materials; including concrete, asphalt, and others.

Over the course of the summer, faculty have looked to future needs of the Civil Engineering Program and have purchased two Universal Testing Machines. These two testers allow for stress or strain-controlled testing of various materials with fine precision. In the short term, the faculty will utilize these machines in a variety of courses; including Mechanics of Materials, Structural Mechanics, Steel Design, and Reinforced Concrete Design. Upon completion of the renovated building, the faculty will have a fully functioning Soils lab, Concrete lab, Civil materials testing area. Faculty are currently reviewing space needs and equipment needs to fully equip each space as new courses are added to the schedule each semester.

ECI 351 - Structural Mechanics Exam 1 - Problem 2

To finish this section on Electrical Engineering here is some code that the students wrote to graph the Common Mode Rejection Ratio (CMRR) for the Texas InstruTruss Bridge ments µA741 operational amplifier and compare with the one given1 on page 9 of the in the figure. Also solve for the force on memdatasheet. bers FH, DF, and DG. Spice Code for UA741 CMMR Thermodynamics Problem: When a fridge stands in a room at 20o C, the motor ∗ CMMR o f TI uA741 model

For you civil engineers out there, the following is a sample problem taken from Exam 1 in their Structural Mechanics course that you might like to try and solve (the answers can be found at the back of this newsletter).

The structure is located in Chicago (elevation less than 1000 ft) in an open flat terrain.

. i n c l u d e uA741 . mod VS 1 0 AC 1 Vcc 5 0 15V Vee 0 6 15V XOP1 2 3 5 6 4 UA741 R1 1 3 1 k R2 3 4 10 k R3 1 2 1 k R4 2 0 10 k XOP2 0 7 5 6 8 UA741 R5 1 7 1 k R6 7 8 10 k . control a c d e c 15 1 2Meg g n u p l o t d a t a 20∗ l o g 1 0 ( v ( 8 ) / v ( 4 ) ) . endc . end

M ECHANICAL E NGINEERING There are currently 25 students enrolled in Mechanical Engineering of which 5 are Juniors, 6 are Sophomores, and 14 are freshman. There are 2 full time faculty members teaching mechanical engineering courses and we are currently searching for 2 more to begin in the fall of 2019.

During this past summer we purchased equipment for our mechanical engineering machine shop. We now have a vertical mill, 1

Structure has to extract 500W of heat from the inside, This means that Ke = 1 and Kzt = 1 for this at 4o C, to compensate for less than perfect in- problem. sulation. How much power must be supplied to the motor if its efficiency is 80% of the maximum achievable? z Kz ft m 0-15 0-4.6 0.85 20 6.1 0.9 25 7.6 0.94 C IVIL E NGINEERING 30 9.1 0.98 40 12.2 1.04 There are currently 29 students enrolled in Civil Engineering of which 13 are Juniors, 10 Use Surface L/B Cp are Sophomores, and 6 are freshman. There with are 2 full time faculty and 2 adjunct faculty Windward All 0.8 qz teaching civil engineering courses and we are Wall values searching for 1 more to begin in the fall of 0-1 -0.5 2019.

Leeward Wall 2 -0.3 qh Currently, we don’t have a permanent ≥ 4 -0.2 building for our civil engineering laboratoSide All ries and so we are fortunate to have Braun -0.7 qh Walls values Intertec, a local engineering company, hosting our Civil Engineering Lab 1 course. The course is taught by Braun Intertec engineer Wes Dickhut and is carried out in the modern Considering only wind load, Kd = 1, and laboratory facilities in the Bismarck location that the structure is rigid (G = 0.85), fully en-

Google search for Texas Instruments UA741 and you will find both the datasheet and the PSpice model.

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S UMMER P ROJECTS AND I NTERNSHIPS

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involved a lot of project management, going to the site and deciding on how much piping we would need, where we wanted to install it, etc.” Bailey discussed how he attended weekly meetings with all kinds of engineers from different firms for the construction of an hospital. They would go over the different designs (in Revit) in detail with everyone to complete the details of the design. He used a lot of material from his EME 341 Thermodynamics course as well as control systems in programming AC and boiler systems. Overall he had a great summer, met a lot of engineers in the various companies, and made really good money. He plans on doing another internship with them next summer as well. The company mentioned to Bailey that they were impressed with his communication skills, his CAD experience, and his ability to present ideas when compared with people they have had from other engineering schools. They really liked the small class sizes and hands-on, project-based, courses we have at Mary Engineering and will definitely look for more of our students in the future.

Almost all of our Sophomore engineering students had internships and have returned to start their junior year this fall with many great stories of the fun and interesting things they did working over the summer. Here is a sampling of them: Michael Gorder is a Senior Civil Engineering student who completed his second Top View internship this summer at the City of Mandan closed (GCpi = ±0.18), and is used for heavy supervised by Justing storage (V = 105mph).

Froseth, City of ManDetermine and sketch the forces on the: dan Engineer. Michael (a) windward wall [6 points]. did many things during (b) leeward wall [2 points]. his time there includ(c) roof, with a 20o slope, Cp(windward roof) = ing surveying, inspectMichael −0.514 and Cp(leeward roof) = −0.6 [4 points]. ing projects, reading bid proposals.

He worked on the temporary roundabouts Noah Krebs is a Junior Civil Engineering project in Mandan, a lot of arcGIS work instudent who worked for the USGS Dakota cluding making a map of all the crashes in ND Water Science CenC ONSTRUCTION ter under the Studies E NGINEERING AND Chief Joel Galloway.

During his summer M ANAGEMENT Noah helped with data collection in the field for investigations of There are currently six students enrolled water quality on surin Construction Engineering and Management Noah face water and groundNorth Dakota Crash Data of which none are Juniors, three are Sophowater wells. He also worked with surveying mores, and three are freshmen. We are curfor the purpose of equipment setup and runrently in the midst of a faculty search for a with detail reports for each in the last seven ning levels for different gage houses2 across suitable candidate to help design and teach years, also made a public map for the Mandan the state. In the office Noah helped with our construction management courses. What cemetery that the public can use to find their regression analysis techniques for different we are looking for is, ideally, someone who loved ones online in a GIS program. projects and worked with excel on numerous Ida Narbuvoll is a Junior Civil Engihas a Ph.D. in Construction Management or projects as well. He was also involved in an some closely related field, experience in in- neering student who spent eight weeks of the ArcGIS project helping make the shape file of dustry as a construction manager, as well as summer in an internan erosion analysis on the lower brule region. experience in designing engineering courses ship at the Norwegian Overall he had a fun and interesting internship and degrees. The reader will have to wait un- engineering company with the United States Geological Survey. til the next issue of this newsletter to find out Norconsult under loAustin Konschak is a Junior Civil Engical manager Dag Meli. whether or not we are successful. neering student who worked for Northern She spent much of her Technologies (NTI) time modeling buildout of Bismarck this ings in Revit and AutoIda CAD and doing energy calculations for apart- summer under suC HEMICAL , P ETROLEUM , ment complexes and dimensioning of beams pervisor Tyler Hall.

AND U NDECIDED and columns. Her main projects were design- Austin’s duties over ing a waste disposal station, a few apartments, the summer consisted of lab work and drivand an auto repair garage.

There are a small number of students Bailey Meyer is a Junior Mechanical En- ing to job sites to perAustin who are enrolled in Chemical Engineering gineering student who worked at a mechan- form plasticity tests on concrete or nuclear density gauge tests on and Petroleum Engineering via our agreement ical company (HVAC, compacted fill. with UND. This means that they will take heating and cooling, their first two years of courses at the Univer- plumbing, etc.) in ShePhillip Springsteen is a Junior Elecsity of Mary and then they will finish their de- boigan, Wisconsin, untrical Engineering student who worked for gree by taking online courses from UND. Pathfinder Inspections der the president Dave At the moment 11 of our freshmen stu- Aldag. In describing and Field Services in dents are still undecided as to which type of his daily duties Bailey Dickinson, ND, this engineering they will be majoring in. This is said, “I would look at summer. His job was very normal. In fact, it is rare to find a fresh- blueprints and make to build and analyze Bailey very large excel data man student who fully understands what each corrections to what kind of engineering is all about. This is why was being build, basically altering the design sheets and invoices, we have designed our ENR 101 course in a of what was originally planned. I also did a lot conduct measurements way that will help them make that decision. of heating and cooling load calculations, for using Google earth, Phillip See the article in this newsletter by Dr. Nancy example to get the correct BTU’s for the var- make and use field ious rooms. I bid on different projects which maps, and repair equipment and tools. He Kelly for more details about this course.

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A USGS gage house is a monitoring station for data collection.

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was able to use his programming skills to find ways to save the company money by isolating the sources for various issues that show up in pipeline maintenance using data analysis.

Caleb Weisgarber is a Junior Civil Engineering student who did a summer internship under Ken Olheiser at National Information Solutions Cooperative (NISC). Caleb was part of the sysadmin group who dealt with customer error reports.

Caleb His work involved a lot of coding in bash shell script working on the old reports that they had not had the time to do. Caleb was able to complete those old error reports by fixing small errors that he was tasked with finding in the old coding that was used.

Alexander Davis is a Junior Civil Engineering student who worked at Braun Intertec in Bismarck this summer.

He performed density tests, concrete tests, and rebar inspections in the field. He also ran proctors, gradations, and concrete breaks in the lab. Alex says, “It was great experience and probably the best job I have Alex ever had. I really enjoyed the responsibilities and trust in that company where everyone works together. It was well worth my time and if that wasn’t enough, it was well worth my piggy bank.”

Jarad Zittleman is a Junior Mechanical Engineering student who did plumbing and HVAC work for Dirk Plumbing and Heating in Mandan, ND. This was Jarad’s third summer working with them and he was given a lot of responsibility this summer. He Jarad laid out the entire duct work of a new house based off the CAD drawing. He did gas piping, basic plumbing duties, and cleaned/maintained air conditioners.

Jarad says, “I had an absolute blast with these guys and am so happy I did it. Seeing this side of the construction industry was an amazing experience and I will use these skills for the rest of my life both in basic knowledge and the engineering industry.”

Levi Clagett is a Junior Civil Engineering student who worked for the City of Bismarck this summer under Cleary Johs. He did surveying, inspecting, as well as grunt work. Levi says, “One of my first responsibilities here was surveying, which was nice Levi because I had already learned a lot of it from class already. Surveying is always a great experience because you get to see what a project looks like before it even gets started.

Besides surveying though I would mainly act as an inspector, I would read our specs book and learn all the rules that the contractors need to follow while working on our streets

Engineering Quarterly FALL 2018 and sidewalks. From there I would go out into the field, mark up if there was broken concrete within a certain project area, and a short while later a concrete crew would be replacing or repairing that concrete and I was responsible for inspecting their work. With various projects came various degrees of responsibilities, sometimes I would be able to calculate and total costs for the contractor and other times I was supposed to just watch and learn, which was always very interesting and probably the most effective way of learning because so much is always going on. This process was very useful because it taught me how to take and record precise data and measurements, and how to inspect concrete and its base for quality. I learned a ton about the slump of concrete and the importance of quality compacted dirt underneath. Lastly I did all sorts of grunt work like watching a chip-sealing crew tar and rock roads all day, or walking long stretches of roads measuring the lengths of the cracks, finding dangerous or poor functioning sidewalk, etc. I could go on forever, I think I experienced just about every single aspect of the life of a city engineer this summer. It was an incredible experience that taught me way more about engineering than I had ever expected. Throughout the school year I’ll continue to help organize and inspect the work of the contractors, and when all that shuts down I’ll probably be surveying or doing general office work.”

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Engineering under supervisor Jeremy Butman. His duties included building autoCAD and Revit models to be used by contractors, performing calculations to ensure the Richard proper material and wiring is used and demanded of the contractors. He learned many skills including autoCAD and Revit and how private sector engineering works and operates, how the biding process for jobs works, and other basic engineering duties. Richard said, “I thoroughly enjoyed my internship and my time at Prairie Engineering this summer. It was a fun and interesting environment all summer.”

Austen Dubriel is a Junior Electrical Engineering student who worked for the Fresno Grizzlies, the triple-A affiliate team for the Houston Astros major league baseball organization. His duties included audio systems in the stadium and playing the varAusten ious music which is associated to each of the individual players.

Austin said, “it was an awesome experience to not only meet the players but also to have them depend on me to keep the audio sysNoah Kraft is a Junior Electrical En- tems working. It felt like a VIP up in the gineering student who worked for Kildeer sound booth at the stadium, and it was fun to play around with the stadium audio systems Mountain Manufacbetween games.” turing in Dickinson, ND, this summer on their aerospace contracts. He spent his time working with excel spreadsheets and computer programNoah ming where he had to optimize aspects of the cable and wiring assembly process and really impressed his employer. The Mary Engineering School has since been contacted by KMM to ask for another part time employee during the school year and six more interns for next summer!

Aaron Bales is a Junior Electrical Engineering student who worked at Bismarck Parks and Recreation over the summer. Aaron’s duties included general maintenance of sports complexes, getting the fields ready for tournaments (such as McQuade’s, which is the largest charity softball Aaron tournament in the world), fixing equipment, etc. Aaron said, “I had a great summer and made lots of money. I relaxed and went camping and fishing. However, next summer I plan to work at MDU’s Heskett Power Station and finally do some real Electrical Engineering! (in addition to fishing and camping)!”

Isaac Saad is a Junior Civil Engineering student who worked for Bio-medical Forenzics in San Francisco, California. Isaac says, “I don’t know how much I can say about the project because I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but it was basically doing Isaac physics and research for court cases to prove if the story was true.

I loved it and would definitely be interested in more jobs like that.”

Evan Anderson is a Junior Electrical Engineering student who worked at AbbVie Inc. as a project support engineer. He worked with a senior engineering on a project which used a prospective machine that was intended to go on the production line. He Evan used ultrasonic waves to test for cracks and fractures in the shringes and analyzed the data for accuracy. Evan also sat in on vendor consultations and various other work. Evan said, “ I had a great experience working with AbbVie, gaining knowledge and working with a team on a project which could greatly benefit the company.”

Richard Bendish is a Junior Electrical Rebekkah Keller is a Junior Mechanical Engineering student who worked at Prairie Engineering student who worked with John’s

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Landscape where she helped design beautiful desert landscapes out of Apple Valley, California. Her duties included would laying rock, building fences, planting trees or desert Rebekkah plants, painting, and fixing/installing irrigation. The irrigation piping was installed under ground and she assembled the wiring and programmed the sprinkler systems for houses with sprinklers or drip-lines. Rebekkah stated that she “had to understand the pressure running through the pipes to reach all parts of the yard, and, to do that, the pipes needed to be the correct size with a specific number of exit points. More so, the valves needed to be in working order so that the information being sent through the computer system of the control box could properly turn on the irrigation lines. That brings up the application of the wiring and electrical work. With the sprinkler systems and drip-lines, we had to program the irrigation control box and timer. In some cases, if the control box was in need of updating or repair, we would open the box and alter the wiring inside, thus allowing the most efficient flow of water to be used for the yard.”

“In conclusion, this summer’s job wasn’t the most ideal ‘engineering’ job, but the concepts and working mindset can all be applied to a future job that is more oriented towards engineering. Whether my job would be more mechanical or civil, all the knowledge can potentially build off each other. I would say that it was worth it.”

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The Collatz Conjecture (which is unproven) is that if you keep performing the above operations, you will eventually reach the number 1. Here is an example so you can see how the procedure works:

a0 = 13

puzzle is to fill a grid with digits –– 1 through 4 for a 4 × 4 grid, 1 through 5 for a 5 × 5, 1 through 6 for a 6 × 6, etc. –– so that no digit appears more than once in any row or any column. The grids are divided into heavily outlined groups of cells –– often called ‘cages’ –– and the numbers in the cells of each cage must produce a certain ‘target’ number when combined using a specified mathematical operation. For example, a linear three-cell cage specifying addition and a target number of 6 in a 4 × 4 puzzle must be satisfied with the digits 1, 2, and 3. Digits may be repeated within a cage, as long as they are not in the same row or column. No operation is relevant for a single-cell cage: placing the ‘target’ in the cell is the only possibility (thus being a free space). The target number and operation appear in the upper left-hand corner of the cage.

T HE C OLLATZ P ROBLEM

a1 = 3 · 13 + 1 = 40

by rule 3

a2 = 1/2 · 40 = 20

by rule 2

a3 = 1/2 · 20 = 10

by rule 2

a4 = 1/2 · 10 = 5

by rule 2

a5 = 3 · 5 + 1 = 16

by rule 3

a6 = 1/2 · 16 = 8

by rule 2

a7 = 1/2 · 8 = 4

by rule 2

a8 = 1/2 · 4 = 2

by rule 2

a9 = 1/2 · 2 = 1

by rule 2

and since you have now reached the number 1 you stop3 . If you ever find a starting number that did not eventually go back to 1 then you will have disproved the Collatz conjecture and you will win the prize. Alternatively, you could prove that all possible starting numbers do indeed end in 1 you will also win the prize.

Prove it, or disprove it, either way you win.

The students begin by writing a simple computer program in the C programming language: collatz.c # i n c l u d e <s t d i o . h> # i n c l u d e < s t d l i b . h>

By TERRY PILLING

F UN G AMES TO T RY

Engineers love puzzles. So, for fun, in this section we present a random sampling of puzzles as well as some more involved projects that our engineering students have had to solve in their various sophomore level courses. These are intended to be fun things that the reader may want to solve, play with, and even explore further themselves.

K EN K EN P UZZLE

By NANCY KELLY

One of the problems that sophomore students had to study in their Computational Methods (ENR 210) course is called the Collatz Problem. This is an unsolved math problem and has been unsolved for a very long time. In fact, there is fame and even offers of large amounts of money for anyone who can manage to solve it!

The reason the students looked at is as part of one of their weekly assignments was simply to test their ability to take a problem and figure out how to study it with a computer.

I.e. to write computer programs, analyze data, and study graphs, in an attempt to understand the problem better and perhaps even solve it.

This is the type of thing that is frequently done in all branches of engineering. Of course, it usually isn’t unsolved math problems that are studied in an engineering company, but the techniques and mental processes involved are actually similar in any data analysis or mathematical modeling problem. It is a useful skill to be able to quickly turn a problem into a mathematical model, or a collection of data, and then to study it using computer programs.

Here is the Collatz Problem algorithm: 1. Pick any integer bigger than zero.

KenKen and KenDoku are a style of arithmetic logic puzzle invented in 2004 by Japanese math teacher Tetsuya Miyamoto.

KenKen derives from the Japanese word for cleverness. As in Sudoku, the goal of each 3 4

i n t main ( i n t a r g c , char ∗∗ a r g v ) { int a ; i f ( a r g c != 2) { p r i n t f ( ” Usage : %s number ” , ∗ argv ) ; return 1; } a = a t o i ( argv [ 1 ] ) ; while ( 1 ) { p r i n t f ( ”%d ” , a ) ; i f ( a == 1 ) break ; i f ( ! ( a %2) ) a = a / 2 ; e l s e a = 3∗ a + 1 ; } p r i n t f ( ”\n” ) ; return 0; }

The program takes a number as an input and then outputs the entire sequence that you get by performing the Collatz algorithm until it reaches the number 1. This saves them the time of calculating it by hand and it also enables them to generate a large collection of data – namely the Collatz sequences for a bunch of numbers. They can then analyze this data any way they like to try and find patterns and better understand the problem.

Here is a problem for the reader: The length, (or Stopping Time) is defined as the 3. If the number is odd, multiply by 3 and then number of iterations of the algorithm it takes add 1. until you reach the number 1. For example, if 4. Then do the same thing with the result. we start with the number 13 as we did above, 2. If the number is even, divide it by 2.

If you kept going it wouldn’t matter since you would simply loop forever via 1 −→ 4 −→ 2 −→ 1 over and over again.

Google ‘Collatz Problem’ if you want to find out more.

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35 01 4b 46 7f ff 0c 10 5f t=19312 o The above says that the temperature of the sensor is 19.312 degrees C

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and the graph of the step response over time is shown in the figure where one can see

3) WRITE CONTROL CODE

the length would be 9 since it took us 9 iterations to get to the number 1. You might enjoy seeing if you can produce this interesting pattern that the students found. Nobody knows why the pattern shows up. Like I said, it is unsolved4 so there is not too much known.

R ASPBERRY P I

By TERRY PILLING

In their Computer Aided Measurement and Controls course, the students were required to construct a data collection apparatus using a raspberry pi computer and then use it to collect data on something they were interested in investigating, analyze the data, and then write a scientific report on what they found.

Here are the verbatim instructions as they were given to the students: Here are the instructions for using the DS18B20 digital temperature sensor with your Raspberry Pi. 1) BUILD THE CIRCUIT First hook up the circuit. You can use a breadboard, or you can just hook all the wires together, or you could build a little self-contained package with the temperature sensor in it and three wires coming out which would plug in to the GPIO (the two lines of pins) on the Raspberry Pi. CIRCUIT DIAGRAM ___________ / \ | DS18b20 | ------------/ | \ | |--R1--| | | | GND (GPIO 4)(3.3V) Where R1 GPIO 4 GPIO 3.3V GND

= = = =

4.7kohms Pin 7 Pin 1 Pin 39

2) SETUP THE PI o sudo vi /boot/config.txt - if there is a line in the file that says: dtoverlay = wt-gpio then you are fine, otherwise add that line to the bottom of the file and reboot. o plug the temperature sensor into the pins of the Raspberry Pi as shown in the circuit diagram above. o sudo modprobe w1-gpio o sudo modprobe w1-therm o go to /sys/bus/w1/devices o there will be a directory in there starting with 28-<number> where <number> is some series of numbers. o cd into that directory. o now type: cat w1_slave you will get two lines of output.

There are a bunch of numbers but if the first line ends in YES then your temperature reading worked and the second line will end in t=<5-digit number> and that 5-digit number is the temperature. o EXAMPLE here is my output: 35 01 4b 46 7f ff 0c 10 5f:crc=5f YES 5

o next you write bash scripts to control the device, take readings from the device, execute the analysis code, and automatically upload the results to your google drive cloud account. o you might want to attach a red and a blue LED to the GPIO pins and use the commands "gpio -g mode 18 out" and also "gpio write 18 1" and "gpio write 18 0" to control an LED from BCM pin 18, turning it on when the temperature crosses a certain threshold and then turning it off again when the temperature crosses back.

This exemplifies control/feedback.

4) WRITE ANALYSIS CODE o next you write various filtering and analysis code in C which you can call from your bash control script which will filter and format the data to extract the information that you are interested in.

5) PLOT THE DATA o add lines to your bash control script so that it will automatically produce a Gnuplot script with proper titles and axis labels and will then run Gnuplot on the script and output both a dumb terminal graph and also a png file of the graph.

6) WRITE A SCIENTIFIC PAPER o write a scientific paper in LaTeX which explains everything you did, including the setup of the Raspberry Pi, the circuit diagram, the explicit code that you wrote, and the graphical results as well as a discussion of those results and a conclusion.

that it is an underdamped system5

Mechanical Engineering Solutions • The solution to the mechanical engineering train problem: (a) θ = 1257rad ⇒ x = 440m, and (b) ω = 25.1rad/s ⇒ v = 8.77m/s.

• The solution to the mechanical engineering truss bridge problem: AB = 84.85 kN compression, BD = 63.24 kN compression, CD = 12.5 kN compression, FH = 127.28 kN compression, DF = 94.87 kN compression, DG = 37.5 kN tension.

• The solution to the mechanical engineering fridge problem: The maximum efficiency comes from using a Carnot (reversible) fridge, for which QH /QC = TH /TC . Here QC is known, and so

TH −1 W = QH − QC = QC TC

where W , QH and QC refer to energy transfer per second, measured in Watts. With TH = Solutions to Problems 293K and TC = 277K, QC = 500W gives Wmax = 29W. However the real fridge works at only 80% of the maximum efficiency, so Here we give the solutions to the various W = 29/0.8 = 36W problems given above from each of the engineering majors. In most cases we only give the straight up numerical answer. However, Civil Engineering Solutions as we have mentioned previously, in the actual engineering courses the students are re• The solution to the Civil Engineering quired to give the entire step-by-step solution along with the logical reasoning involved. In fact, in most assignments, the numerical solutions are given in the question! Points are only awarded for the the logical reasoning and no points are awarded for only giving the numerical answer. Our philosophy is that one doesn’t really understand something until you can explain it clearly to others.

Electrical Engineering Solutions • The solution to the voltages problem is: Vc = 4V V0 = 20V V∆ = 18V

exam problem is: (a) p0−15 = 21.2 or 11.4 psf, p20 = 22.2 or 12.4 psf, p24 = 22.8 or 13.0 psf. (b) pleeward = −6.7 or −16.4 psf.

• The solution to the op amp problem is:

R2 R4 R2 Vo = − + 1+ VI R1 R1 R3 • The solution to the electrical engineering circuits exam problem is: V0 (t) = e−8000t {45 cos(6000t) − 60 sin(6000t)}

(c) pwindward roof = −7.0 or −16.8 psf, pleeward roof = −9.0 or −18.7 psf.

In fact, the differential equation is identical to that of an underdamped Simple Harmonic Oscillator, like a mass-spring-dashpot mechanical system.