There are few better ways to spend a summer than working at the Smithsonian Center for Materials Research and Education, according to ME undergraduate student Evan Quasney, who spent 11 weeks working at the Center last summer.
During his time with the Center, Quasney was actively involved in two key projects that offered him a variety of learning opportunities.
The primary project was to determine a relationship, if any existed, between mechanical and chemical properties in wood-based newspapers. Quasney's duties with the project ran from the experiment design phase through the data analysis. "Everything from setting up the experiments and running them to the data analysis and subsequent writing of the paper was my job," said Quasney.
The second project, which was undertaken during "down-time" between testing for the primary assignment, was to determine the true elastic modulus of wood-based newspapers via non-traditional methods.
Quasney said he learned a great deal about mechanical engineering and polymeric chemistry from the experimental side during his internship, including how to conduct tests to test for principal stresses and strains. He also studied and explored coefficients of moisture expansion and their relationship to elastic modulus and helped define the relationship between chemical composition of an organic polymer and its subsequent mechanical properties.
"The experience was invaluable," said Quasney. "Not only did I build my knowledge base to help ease into the school year, I also gained strong research experience and learned about what mechanical engineering research entails. The work taught me a great number of 'skill' trades within the mechanical engineering fields; it is not often that sophomores in college have designed and executed their own experiments and had their work published. Furthermore, the ME knowledge that I acquired has been put to use one way or another in every engineering class I have taken since I returned to school here for my sophomore year. I realized how much I truly did learn because I constantly refer back to my time spent with the Smithsonian."
Evan Quasney runs a 30-second stress-relaxation test on a paper specimen approximately 1 cm wide by 5 cm long. The test, coupled with restrained dessication (drying) and free dessication provide the most accurate method for determining the elastic modulus of a material. This is the method he used determining the elastic modulus of paper in varying stages of decay during his research last summer. |
Quasney also added that until the internship, he had had no direct ME training, and the skills and theories he learned are some of the basic cornerstones of mechanical engineering.
"This internship taught me an enormous amount about stress and strain," he said, "and it taught me the finer nuances of the benefits and disadvantages of various types of tests used to measure stresses and strains."
Quasney certainly represented ME well, according to a letter to Chair Dennis Assanis from Dr. Charles Tumosa, Senior Research Chemist at the Center.
"During the past summer, I had the pleasure of working with one of your undergraduate students, Evan Quasney... If Evan is an example of the education you are providing your students, your program is to be highly commended," he wrote.
A native of Silver Spring, Quasney came to ME for all the right reasons, especially this one: "When I visited on Campus Day, I just 'clicked' with this school. The entire campus atmosphere and learning environments were nothing like I had ever experienced before, and I simply had to be a part of it."