This Term:

School is about developing tools of various kinds. For a number of years I have been concerned that we send our students out into the world with very little actual physics and engineering modeling experience using some programming language. At OSU there are a number of places where Matlab is embedded into their course content. At various times in the past we have worked with similar software here at COCC in both the calculus and engineering programs. A particular challenge is that while the individual licenses for the software are relatively inexpensive for students (typically around $100) the costs for the college to have it installed on campus are ridiculous. Recently my daughter started a job at a large national research lab and was told that Matlab had gotten too expensive and painful for them and everyone was expected to learn how to accomplish the same tasks using an open source coding platform call Python. This is apparently becoming more and more common.

At the same time there is a need for all of us to learn to communicate effectively in our professional work and for STEM workers there is always a challenge around representing math and other specialty language (greek characters etc) well. LaTeX is a markup language that is widely used across the STEM world to meet this need and I have in the past tried to make this the required tool for creating labs for this course. Fast forward 10 years and now both Python and markup tools for creating great documents are available in a single open source package called Jupyter.

The project this year will ask you to learn two new languages in parallel along with a new tool that wraps around them. This is going to be challenging and some of you will find it delightful while others will not be as happy. All of you who go on to finish your BS in a STEM field will use at least some features of these tools somewhere in that journey. That's why we're doing it.......!

(ACTIVELY UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!)

Bruce: Toast Problem

Jupyter: Skills Development

Students: Project Framing

Students: Project Expectations

Resources: