Area Moment of Inertia Calculator
Louis Woodhams, Washington University in St. Louis, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science
This activity was selected for the Teaching Computation in the Sciences Using MATLAB Peer Reviewed Teaching Collection
This activity has received positive reviews in a peer review process involving five review categories. The five categories included in the process are
- Computational, Quantitative, and Scientific Accuracy
- Alignment of Learning Goals, Activities, and Assessments
- Pedagogic Effectiveness
- Robustness (usability and dependability of all components)
- Completeness of the ActivitySheet web page
For more information about the peer review process itself, please see https://serc.carleton.edu/teaching_computation/materials/activity_review.html.
- First Publication: September 18, 2020
- Reviewed: April 13, 2021 -- Reviewed by the On the MATLAB Activity Review Process
Summary
Students must use Matlab to draw a region of interest on an image and calculate properties of the shape such as area, area moment of inertia, and principal axes.
Topics
Engineering
Grade Level
College Lower (13-14)
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Learning Goals
The goal was to have students try to solve a real-world type problem. It is also a way to firm up their understanding of engineering concepts such as area moment of inertia and principal axes.
Context for Use
This was given as a final project for a sophomore level numerical methods class. After some initial questions, most students seemed to do very well with the project. Many found interesting and creative ways to solve the problem.
Description and Teaching Materials
The most important file is the .pdf with the project description and starter code. I also provided a workflow video so that students could see what the code should do. Finally, I provided students with some test images that they could use to test their code.
Description of AMOI Caclulator Assignment (Acrobat (PDF) 227kB Sep11 20)
Workflow Video (MP4 Video 65.6MB Sep11 20)
Sample image for testing
![[creative commons]](/images/creativecommons_16.png)
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Sample image for testing
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Sample image for testing
Reuse: This item is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ You may reuse this item for non-commercial purposes as long as you provide attribution and offer any derivative works under a similar license.
Teaching Notes and Tips
Assessment
References and Resources
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