ADVANCED MATERIALS & PROCESSES | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2024 29 project with intermittent experiments is the same. These camps are free to have their own unique formats, and some are resident camps while others are not. The volunteers include senior or retired engineers and early-to-mid- career engineers. Most important are the junior mentors, who are previous camp students often currently enrolled at university, helping bridge the gap between older engineers and camp attendees. Further, the volunteers are not just failure analysts but come from a wide range of disciplines and industries: steel production, corrosion in the oil and gas industry, metallography, medical devices, additive manufacturing, beer manufacturing, and more. This diversity helps the students and even volunteers see the different opportunities available for materials graduates. CAMP OVERVIEW The weeklong Eisenman Camp typically works the same each year. Students are divided into groups of five to seven, led by two or more volunteer mentors; every group works on a failure analysis project throughout the week. In the morning, one or more students from each group present a quick update on their progress. Recurring during the week is the “materials word of the day,” which helps students understand some basic materials concepts. The camp starts on a Sunday evening, where, after introductions, the students take apart a household appliance. Monday is the longest day, starting with pewter figurine casting, followed by short lectures teaching various materials concepts. This training is interspersed with hands-on demonstrations of the equipment, from microscopes to furnaces. By Tuesday, students are working on their projects using the equipment, with after- noon breaks to participate in an interactive demo of metals and materials. Wednesday is shorter, with a liquid nitrogen ice cream demonstration, an evening hike, and a picnic to close the day. On Thursday and Friday, the students work with local blacksmiths, ending with an evening pool party. On Friday, there is a sand-casting demonstration, closing out with the final evening presentation of each group’s projects after dinner. TECHNIQUES TIED TO SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS The first night, the students are given a common household appliance like a landline phone or a toaster, which they disassemble. Not only does this help expend some energy and build rapport between the students and their mentors, but it also teaches them how to use their tools, often for the first time. This activity is not just mindless destruction, as each student must find some component and then describe the part, what they think it is made of, and why they think that material was used. Parts could be anything from a brass bell in a telephone to a carbon steel heating coil to the often-overlooked plastic housing common in most everyday goods. The following day, the students present these findings to everyone at camp. Mentors try to get students to think about the price and weight first and foremost, as well as the mechanical and magnetic properties, plus aesthetics like color, luster, and feel. After a quick safety briefing the following Monday morning, the stu- dents cast molten pewter into medieval figurines, like knights, archers, or the coveted dragon (Fig. 2). Casting gets students up and around, helps them build familiarity with safety equipment, and gives them confidence that they can handle hot metal. It is also an excellent introduction to process revision and improvement through iteration. It builds enthusiasm because it is fun, but it is also a unique opportunity to start introducing concepts[2]. The recurring daily project is examining a broken component. Each lead mentor typically brings their own fractured parts, like a bike axle that separated from fatigue or pliers that broke suddenly from embrittlement. The students determine the probable cause without the mentors divulging or even knowing the answer. One of the challenges is how to teach materials concepts to students without it seeming like just another summer school “nerd camp.” The mentors designed the schedule to min- imize time spent sitting passively into shorter, more interactive lessons. When discussing the equipment, the students are broken out into their groups, bringing their failure project part(s) with them to each equipment station. Using food is a great method for helping to understand scientific concepts[3]. The failure analysis talk centers on cake and cookie baking, showing how missing an ingredient, poor proportions, or baking time and temperature can cause a “failure,” and how to diagnose the issue and improve the product. The students also break candies and chocolates, learning about tension, compression, torsion, and ductile and brittle behavior. Once broken, the macroscopic fracture surfaces are visually present, and during the week, the mentors point back to “the carrot” or the “chocolate bar.” Carrots, and other root vegetables, are great for showing different (brittle) fracture shapes depending on the loading direction. The fractured food can illustrate microscopic fracture features, Fig. 2 – Materials Camp student Ruth Yu casting a figurine. Courtesy of Franck Smanio.
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