Engineering Dynamics

Purpose: to help other instructors teaching the same course

Common Course ID:  ENGR 230
CSU Instructor Open Textbook Adoption Portrait

Abstract: An attempt was made to use an open-source textbook from LibreTexts for an Engineering Dynamics by Professor Antony Snell in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at CSU Maritime. It was hoped that the open-source textbook would provide a background reference to supplement the instructor’s own class-notes and also provide a useful sources of homework problems. The main motivation to adopt an open textbook was to find a low-cost option for the students. Students are able to access the open textbook in online format or using pdf download. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend the selected book for use in an Engineering Dynamics course.

Engineering Dynamics ME330
Brief Description of course highlights:  Analysis of particles and rigid bodies in motion using vector methods, calculus, and analytical geometry. Topics include kinematic analysis of motion and relative motion, kinetic analysis of forces and motion, rotation and translation of rigid bodies, work-energy methods, and impulse-momentum methods.  The 2023-2024 Course Catalog may be found at:      http://catalog.csum.edu/
Prerequisites:         ME 232 Engineering Statics  and MTH 212 Calculus III

Student population:  This course is exclusively for Mechanical Engineering students, most of whom will take this course in Spring of their sophomore year. It is one of the first block of engineering analysis courses that they take. They will have completed Calculus 1, 2 and 3 and Physics 1 in addition to Engineering Statics as prerequisites. Most students will be taking the Differential Equations class concurrently with dynamics, which allows students to apply some newly learnt techniques from Differential Equations to the dynamics problems.

Course Goals and Student Learning Outcomes
1. Students will learn how to model real engineering systems as particles and/or rigid bodies. [1]
2. Students will learn how to apply Newton’s and Euler’s Laws methodically to calculate forces and motions of mechanical systems. [1]
3. Students will learn how to apply Energy and Momentum methods to calculate forces and motions of mechanical systems. [1]
4. Students will develop the ability to decide which methods of analysis to use for various types of problems. [1]
5. Students will learn how and when to use computers to help analyze the dynamics of mechanical systems. [1]

Key challenges faced and how resolved:  Ideally, the use of OER would solve an on-going problem that students would not do homework because they did not have access to the expensive textbook. Homework is a very important component in this class. Unfortunately, the selected textbook is a Physics I book, which I thought would suffice. It is not an Engineering Dynamics book and  it did not provide the rigor and depth that is expected in Engineering Dynamics.

In the end, I had to use my own notes and write my own homework problems for most of the assignments in this class.  There appears to be an unfilled need for a true Engineering Dynamics textbook.

Textbook or OER/Low cost Title: 

Brief Description:  The LibreTexts book listed below is accessible online in two different ways. It may be accessed as a web-based book with links to each Chapter from a Table of Contents. Within each Chapter is a “sub-Table of Contents” with links to individual Sections. At the end of each Chapter there is a Section with several problems. The books may also be downloaded as complete pdf files for use offline.

Please provide a link to the resource   
“University Physics I – Classical Mechanics”, Julio Gea-Banacloche: University Physics I - Classical Mechanics (Gea-Banacloche) - Physics LibreTexts

Author:  Julio Gea-Banacloche

Student access:  I posted the links to the materials on our CMS. Students may then simply click on the links to take them to LibreTexts. From there they can choose to navigate through the book using a web-based interface or they can download the whole book or sections of the book as pdf files.  

Supplemental resources: I used the text as a supplement to my class notes and for all the homework problems. I don’t believe that there are instructor slides or other supplemental resources.

Provide the cost savings from that of a traditional textbook.  The previous, traditional text book costs $163. Multiply this by 30 students in my class gives a total of $4890.

License: LibreTexts are openly licensed and governed by Creative Commons license at the link:     https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

OER/Low Cost Adoption Process

Provide an explanation or what motivated you to use this textbook or OER/Low Cost option. The primary motivation is to save students money but it also ensures that all of the class is able to access exactly the same resources. In the past, some students would try to avoid purchasing the textbook, Bedford and Fowler’s good text book, which is currently $163 for a hard-bound copy. Avoiding purchase of the book would often lead to them not doing background reading and not doing homework assignments. Practicing on homework problems is an extremely important means of learning and reinforcing the material in this class.

How did you find and select the open textbook for this course?  Campus librarians helped me find some candidate texts for my ME330 Engineering Dynamics class. I met with AL$ coordinator, a librarian, and we searched various OER sites. 

Shockingly, we could NOT find any Engineering Dynamics texts although there were some physics textbooks that seemed to cover dynamics. We found some potential texts although a number of these did not have many unsolved problems to use as homework. I ended up selecting the current LibreTexts book because it did have homework problems at the end of each chapter. 

Sharing Best Practices: The sustainability of open education relies on sharing with others. Please give suggestions for faculty who are just getting started with OER or Low Cost options.  List anything you wish that you had known earlier.

Unfortunately, my choice of textbook was NOT a good one. This text was primarily a Physics I text and lacks the depth and rigor of a true Engineering Dynamics book. I use the texts primarily as a source of homework problems and secondarily as a reference to supplement my class notes. In this respect it was not sufficient. 

Things I like about the text is the way that LibreTexts are available in three forms:

1. A complete pdf download of the entire book
2. Through the LibreTexts website, the book can be navigated using the web interface and individual chapters and sections can be accessed.
3. A nice hardbound copy of the book can be purchased very economically, around $30.

Describe any key challenges you experienced, how they were resolved  and lessons learned. The LibreTexts book is a beginning Physics book rather than an Engineering book. This meant that the emphasis was more on concepts rather than detailed analysis and computation. Concepts of impulse-momentum and work-energy were blurred together whereas most Engineering Dynamics books treat these topics separately and in considerable detail. 

Instructor Name: Antony Snell
I am a Mechanical Engineering professor at the CSU Maritime Academy. I teach Electric Circuits and associated lab, Electro-mechanical Machines and associated lab, Automatic Feedback Control, Engineering Dynamics.

The Department of Mechanical Engineering may be found online at: Department of Mechanical Engineering - CSUM 

Please describe the courses you teach.
ENG250 Electric Circuits and Electronics and associated lab ENG250L.
ME350 Electro-mechanical Machines and associated lab ME350L.
ME460 Automatic Feedback Control
ME330 Engineering Dynamics
ME232 Engineering Statics

Describe your teaching philosophy and any research interests related to your discipline or teaching.  I am always looking for better ways of teaching new concepts. I like to make connections to topics with which students are already familiar. 

My research interests are in the area of dynamics and control of vehicles including “human in the loop”. I am also pursuing research into the dynamics and control of bio-inspired robots.