Sample In-Class Activities for Engineering Statics Course

Activity 1: 3-D Equilibrium

Building frames from erector set pieces and estimating the direction and relative size of reaction
and connection forces before calculating the actual answer.
Objective: Manipulate vector and geometric vectors to compute dot products, moments, and
resultants.

Activity 2: Beams
Piece of foam used illustrate the shapes of bending moment diagrams before teaching how to
calculate the mathematical solutions.
Objective: Recognize beam loading by creating a beam (foam) with a load and drawing a
bending moment diagram.

Activity 3: Friction Forces

Trying to pull a text book off an upturned palm and noting the difference when multiple books
are added or when wax paper is placed between the books and hand.
Objective: Develop and analyze frictional forces to better understand equilibrium systems that
include frictional forces.

Activities are adapted from:

S.C. Mac Namara, J. V Dannenhoffer, Hands-On Learning for Statics in the Smaller Classroom and
Potential Scale-Up to the Larger Lecture, (2013).