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PROFESSOR: So
typically in the course

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we start off talking
about the structure

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of these cellular materials.

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We do some modeling of honeycomb
and foam type materials,

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and that takes not
quite half the term,

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but most of the first
part of the term anyway.

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And I give them
more problem sets

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at the beginning of the
term, and they don't really

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start on the projects
at the beginning.

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So I give them some background
information to get them going.

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And I assign the project at
the beginning of the course,

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and I think there's
three kind of deadlines.

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One is they have to
give me a proposal.

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I think that's typically
about a month into the course,

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and that can be
fairly brief, but I

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want to at least know
they've got a team.

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They've got an idea.

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They've got some idea
of how they're going

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to carry out their project.

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Then in about another
month they have

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to send me a sort of update on
the project, and by that point,

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I would have expected them,
if they're doing a literature

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review, to start
reading some papers

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and be able to tell me
something about the background

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to their project.

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If they're doing
experiments, I would

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have expected them to at
least gone into the lab

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and maybe made some materials,
or bought some materials,

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and done some preliminary tests.

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And I give them
feedback at that point.

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And at the end of the term,
they hand in the final project.

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And I see them twice
a week in class,

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and I don't really have a formal
recitation, but what I do do

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is every week that a problem
set is due I have office hours.

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And in fact, I don't actually
have it in my office.

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I book a room, and we
do a little tutorial.

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So there's times
throughout the term

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they can see me and come
and ask me questions

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about the project as well.

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So the question is what kind of
feedback do I give the students

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and how do they interact
with me on the projects,

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and typically there's about 20
students that take the course.

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So if they do it in pairs,
there's roughly 10 projects.

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Some of the projects students
just do literature searches,

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and I don't really get
that involved with those.

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They're perfectly capable
of going to the library

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and doing a literature search.

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And some of the students
who are taking it

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are graduate students, and
they often do finite element

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numerical calculations.

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And again, I give them some
advice about how to set it up,

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but often they have
experience doing this,

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and it's sort of applying
what they already

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know to something new, but
they kind of know what to do.

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The way I get the most
involved is if students

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do experimental projects.

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So for instance, in this
elephant skull project,

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I had this connection at the
Museum of Comparatives Zoology,

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and I took the student up there.

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They had this idea
about 3D printing it,

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and we have a 3D printer
in the department.

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And one of the technical
staff, Mike Tarkanian,

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is very, very good
with the students

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and very helpful in getting
them set up on the 3D printer,

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so he helps with that.

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And I give them sort
of general advice.

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When they said now
we want to measure

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some sort of
acoustical response,

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I suggested maybe
you could suspend it

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from a wire, or
thread, or something

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and then put an accelerometer
and measure the vibrations.

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So I try to give them some
general advice like that,

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but they then carry the
experiment out themselves.

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They have to figure out how to
actually put it into practice

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and how to do it.

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And I think they get a
big kick out of that.

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MIT students enjoy that kind
of thing so that's kind of fun,

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and obviously I was
very delighted too

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with this elephant
skull project.

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So there's different
things I try

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to help with-- mostly giving
general advice about how

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they can do their
experimental projects.

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So what are some
of the challenges

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that students encounter
in their projects.

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So I think one thing is
students sometimes are

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little over ambitious in
what's possible to accomplish,

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because typically we have to
cover some material before they

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can even start the project.

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So typically they
don't start the project

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until a month or six
weeks into the term,

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and the term is only three
months long more or less.

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And so they really have a fairly
limited amount of time-- maybe

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six weeks or eight
weeks, something

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like that-- to actually
do the project.

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So if they want
to make materials,

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if they want to do some sort
of processing to make a foam,

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for example, they don't
really have a lot of time,

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because often it takes
some trial and error

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to be able to do that.

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So the projects have
to be fairly focused

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so that they can actually get
something interesting out of it

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in a fairly short
amount of time.

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And sometimes
students might want

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to do something where they
would have to order materials,

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and it may take a few weeks
for the materials to come in.

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So again, I try
to discourage them

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from doing projects where
there's going to be a long lead

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time on getting some
critical thing that they

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need for the project.

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So there are some limitations,
partly because of just the time

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we have for them
to actually do it.

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And they're not just
taking my course.

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They're taking other
courses, so there's

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sort of a limited amount of
time they can spend on it, too.