Abstract
To increase the design experience gained by undergraduate engineering students and to enhance their iterative thinking skills needed in the engineering profession, a new project was developed and assigned in the sophomore-level thermodynamics class taught at the University of Alabama. Students designed a mechanism using a toy drinking bird as a heat engine with the goal of minimizing the time required to raise a small weight a given distance. Besides building teamwork and design skills, several key thermodynamic concepts were also visualized for the students, thus increasing their overall comprehension of the course material.
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