In this video Les Kirkup, author of Experimental Methods for Science and Engineering Students explains the need for students to develop a range of techniques and methods in their journey to becoming successful scientists and engineers .
Credit: Videographer, Mark Parry
I wrote the book because there is no book on the market that really deals with these issues of what students need to do in laboratories.
It’s key that they learn skills and the book focuses on that and it’s one of the few books that takes that approach. Students learn about physics in text books but they don’t learn about laboratory work, except in the lab and they need to be supported with materials.
Students need to learn a range of techniques and methods because they are key to being scientists and engineers. So where do they learn them? They learn them in the laboratory and the skills are so important that they’ll be of life-long value to them.
Students need to learn a range of techniques and methods because they are key to being scientists and engineers. So where do they learn them? They learn them in the laboratory and the skills are so important that they’ll be of life-long value to them. You can’t learn it out of a text book per se but you can be given a lot of guidance and a lot of support that’ll take you a long way to gathering those skillsĀ and mastering those skills
The book assists students in that it takes on a very much hands-on approach, it considers the sorts of situations that students will find themselves in labs and has many worked examples to lead students through from the beginning to the end of solving a problem and the examples have full solutions as well so it helps them because students lack the confidence to see how you tackle a problem so they can tackle one themselves.
So in the book, one of the special features is, it talks about things like gathering data using a smart phone. All students have smartphones and all smartphones can be used to gather data, but how do you do that? The book describes that. It also describes how students can present their findings using technology and that, again, is a key part of the book and a key part of experimental methods, being able to present and explain your work.
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