Sports in engineering: Two hands-on experiments

A multidisciplinary team of faculty and students from two universities and a county college have developed a set of hands-on modules to introduce engineering students to mechanical, aerospace, and chemical engineering concepts and principles through their application to sports. The modules allow for students to explore topics such as aerodynamics, mechanics of materials and transport. In an aerodynamics module, the students study the effects of the rotation rate and the relative ball velocity on the lift and drag forces on a baseball. These forces play a key role in determination of the trajectory of the ball. In a mechanics module, concepts associated with the mechanics (modulus, stress, strain) of sporting materials are addressed. For these two modules a description of the development, use, and results in addition to feedback acquired from student surveys are presented.