Workshop: Mini-Project

Supersaturated sugar-water solution solidifies when cooled and forms what is familiar to most of us as the hard candy. When cooled slowly, the result is a homogeneous, amber-colored transparent solid. What happens when the cooling rate is faster? Below are some images, taken at x100 and x200, of the microstructures when the solid was made by pouring the hot solution into an aluminum muffin cup, placed on a room-temperature table. The structures seen formed on the bottom of the cup.

The crystal structure only appear as islands of white spots on the bottom of the solid, each island about 1mm in diameter. Under the microscope, they are a collection of randomly oriented crystals. Outside of these islands, the solid structure is amorphous.

Wax, unlike sugar, does not form crystalline structure. The surface of a wax pellet is shown in Figure 4. There are no apparant patterns beside the surface roughness, indicating that wax forms an amorphous structure when cooled.

What happens when wax and sugar-water are mixed? This will be the topic of investigation for the mini-project. Temperature profiles during cooling, as well as the resulting macro- and micro-structures, will be studied. The workshops will help build the skills necessary to complete the mini-project. The first week of Summer 1998 will include the following workshops:

• Workshop 1: Experimental Design - Learn how to design an experiment from scratch. What are the things to consider or watch out for, and what are the effective design techniques? Workshop 1 will focus on the design and implementation of a simple experiment, as well as a series of discussions to think about some of the important aspects of experimental design.
• Workshop 2: Computer Skills - Learn to develop LabVIEW panels for instrument interfacing, and also how to work between LabVIEW and Excel to manipulate data. During the workshop, the students will be introduced to LabVIEW through a simple programming exercise, followed by the development of a program for their temperature measurements using pre-programmed sub-VI's.
• Workshop 3: Prototyping - Use the paper rapid prototyping machine to build a mold. This will be a hands-on session where the students will experience the building of the paper mold. They will discuss the importance of prototyping in engineering.
• Workshop 4: Literature Search - Learn the various available resources for information, and tools to search them. Use the techniques learned during the workshop to find information useful in the mini-project, such as the melting temperature of wax.
• Workshop 5: Image Analysis - How were the images seen on this page captured by the computer? How were they processed to improve the visual quality? How can the crystal sizes be determined? This workshop will be a demonstration session to familiarize the students with some of the tools used in image analysis. This will allow the students to include images of their solid in their final presentation.
• Workshop 6: Presentation - Learn how to organize a presentation, and the do's and don'ts of a presentation. The common mistakes made in a presentation, both in terms of presentation style and making the slides, will be discussed. Following a sample presentation and a discussion, the students will learn how to make a presentation using PowerPoint.