Experimental Methods For Science And Engineering Students

An overview of experimental methods providing practical advice to students seeking guidance with their experimental work.

This concise and easy to read text introduces first year students to the analysis and presentation of experimental data. Written for students taking introductory physics courses at tertiary level, Experimental Methods will be a vital resource for all students involved in experimental or laboratory work. It will be equally useful for other quantitative subjects such as chemistry, engineering and geology. Topics of fundamental importance such as keeping a laboratory notebook, analysing experimental data and report writing are often dealt with in separate texts. This book integrates these topics and provides many of the tools that students will need at first year level and beyond.

Experimental Methods and Instrumentation for Chemical Engineers, Second Edition, touches many aspects of engineering practice, research, and statistics. The principles of unit operations, transport phenomena, and plant design constitute the focus of chemical engineering in the latter years of the curricula. Experimental methods and instrumentation is the precursor to these subjects. This resource integrates these concepts with statistics and uncertainty analysis to define what is necessary to measure and to control, how precisely and how often.The completely updated second edition is divided into several themes related to data: metrology, notions of statistics, and design of experiments. The book then covers basic principles of sensing devices, with a brand new chapter covering force and mass, followed by pressure, temperature, flow rate, and physico-chemical properties. It continues with chapters that describe how to measure gas and liquid concentrations, how to characterize solids, and finally a new chapter on spectroscopic techniques such as UV/Vis, IR, XRD, XPS, NMR, and XAS. Throughout the book, the author integrates the concepts of uncertainty, along with a historical context and practical examples.A problem solutions manual is available from the author upon request. Includes the basics for 1st and 2nd year chemical engineers, providing a foundation for unit operations and transport phenomena Features many practical examples Offers exercises for students at the end of each chapter Includes up-to-date detailed drawings and photos of equipment

Every technical investigation involving trial-and-error experimentation embodies a strategy for deciding what experiments to perform, when to quit, and how to interpret the data. This handbook presents several statistically derived strategies which are more efficient than any intuitive approach and will get the investigator to their goal with the fewest experiments, give the greatest degree of reliability to their conclusions, and keep the risk of overlooking something of practical importance to a minimum. Features: Provides a comprehensive desk reference on experimental design that will be useful to practitioners without extensive statistical knowledge Features a review of the necessary statistical prerequisites Presents a set of tables that allow readers to quickly access various experimental designs Includes a roadmap for where and when to use various experimental design strategies Shows compelling examples of each method discussed Illustrates how to reproduce results using several popular software packages on a companion web site Following the outlines and examples in this book should quickly allow a working professional or student to select the appropriate experimental design for a research problem at hand, follow the design to conduct the experiments, and analyze and interpret the resulting data. John Lawson and John Erjavec have a combined 25 years of industrial experience and over 40 years of academic experience. They have taught this material to numerous practicing engineers and scientists as well as undergraduate and graduate students.

Successful characterization of polymer systems is one of the most important objectives of today's experimental research of polymers. Considering the tremendous scientific, technological, and economic importance of polymeric materials, not only for today's applications but for the industry of the 21st century, it is impossible to overestimate the usefulness of experimental techniques in this field. Since the chemical, pharmaceutical, medical, and agricultural industries, as well as many others, depend on this progress to an enormous degree, it is critical to be as efficient, precise, and cost-effective in our empirical understanding of the performance of polymer systems as possible. This presupposes our proficiency with, and understanding of, the most widely used experimental methods and techniques. This book is designed to fulfill the requirements of scientists and engineers who wish to be able to carry out experimental research in polymers using modern methods. Each chapter describes the principle of the respective method, as well as the detailed procedures of experiments with examples of actual applications. Thus, readers will be able to apply the concepts as described in the book to their own experiments. Addresses the most important practical techniques for experimental research in the growing field of polymer science The first well-documented presentation of the experimental methods in one consolidated source Covers principles, practical techniques, and actual examples Can be used as a handbook or lab manual for both students and researchers Presents ideas and methods from an international perspective Techniques addressed in this volume include: Light Scattering Neutron Scattering and X-Ray Scattering Fluorescence Spectroscopy NMR on Polymers Rheology Gel Experiments

Like other sciences and engineering disciplines, software engineering requires a cycle of model building, experimentation, and learning. Experiments are valuable tools for all software engineers who are involved in evaluating and choosing between different methods, techniques, languages and tools. The purpose of Experimentation in Software Engineering is to introduce students, teachers, researchers, and practitioners to empirical studies in software engineering, using controlled experiments. The introduction to experimentation is provided through a process perspective, and the focus is on the steps that we have to go through to perform an experiment. The book is divided into three parts. The first part provides a background of theories and methods used in experimentation. Part II then devotes one chapter to each of the five experiment steps: scoping, planning, execution, analysis, and result presentation. Part III completes the presentation with two examples. Assignments and statistical material are provided in appendixes. Overall the book provides indispensable information regarding empirical studies in particular for experiments, but also for case studies, systematic literature reviews, and surveys. It is a revision of the authors’ book, which was published in 2000. In addition, substantial new material, e.g. concerning systematic literature reviews and case study research, is introduced. The book is self-contained and it is suitable as a course book in undergraduate or graduate studies where the need for empirical studies in software engineering is stressed. Exercises and assignments are included to combine the more theoretical material with practical aspects. Researchers will also benefit from the book, learning more about how to conduct empirical studies, and likewise practitioners may use it as a “cookbook” when evaluating new methods or techniques before implementing them in their organization.

Uncertainties are inevitable in any experimental measurement. Therefore, it is essential for science and engineering graduates to design and develop reliable experiments and estimate the uncertainty in the measurements. This book describes the methods and application of uncertainty analysis during the planning, data analysis, and reporting stages of an experiment. This book is aimed at postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students of various branches of science and engineering. The book teaches methods for estimating random and systematic uncertainties and combining them to determine the overall uncertainty in a measurement. In addition, the method for propagating measurement uncertainties in the calculated result is discussed. The book also discusses methods of reducing the uncertainties through proper instrumentation, data acquisition, and experiment planning. This book provides detailed background and assumptions underlying the uncertainty analysis techniques for the reader to understand their applicability. Various solved examples are provided to demonstrate the application of the uncertainty analysis techniques. The exercises at the end of the chapters have been chosen carefully to reinforce the concepts discussed in the text.