Mechanical Engineering Department
Mechanical Engineering 370
Thermodynamics
Spring 2003 Ticket: 57010 Instructor: Larry Caretto
Engineering Building Room 1333Mail CodePhone: 818.677.6448
E-mail: 8348Fax: 818.677.7062
Writing Assignment
Goals for this assignment: This assignment has two goals. The first is to give you practice in writing about technical matters, a key skill for practicing engineers. The second is to enhance your understanding about problem solving using the first law of thermodynamics.
Content of your submission: In completing this assignment, you are to put yourself in the place of a successful ME 370 student who has now become a tutor for the course. To help the students you are tutoring, you are going to prepare a set of written instructions for solving first-law problems in closed systems. Your written instructions should be easy to follow and should outline a general approach for solving this class of problems.
As a minimum, your instructions must discuss the following items.
- Properties may be found from property tables or ideal gas relations
- If ideal gas relations are used, the heat capacity may be a constant or a function of temperature.
- Engineering units may be SI units may be used. The importance of unit conversions should be included in your discussion.
- Work may be found by direct integration of the path equation or buy finding the area under the path on a P-v diagram.
- The data given for the problem may give the system mass (or be sufficient for you to compute the mass), in which case you can determine energy properties (heat, work, internal energy change) as total energy (kJ or Btu) or you may compute these terms on a per-unit-mass basis (kJ/kg or Btu/lbm).
Process for completing the assignment: Your assignment must be prepared using a word processor. You may use diagrams as and equations as appropriate. (You can cut and paste diagrams and equations from online documents on the course web site.) You will be graded on both your writing ability and the technical content of what you write.
You must have a writing center consultant at the Learning Resources Center review a draft of your paper, before you submit it. The consultant will give you a copy of the appointment form, which you must submit with your final paper. Call 818.677.3033 to make an appointment with a consultant. The consultants are located in room 408 of the Student Services Building. Bring a copy of this assignment, as well as your draft, to your meeting with the consultant. Rewriting initial drafts and having others review them is an important part of writing.
The consultant’s role in helping you with this assignment is stated on the LRC web site (
Consultants help writers understand an assignment, generate ideas, prewrite, develop a thesis, analyze audience, organize and develop ideas, revise a draft, improve proofreading and editing skills, discover their own writing process. They do not, however, proofread, edit, ghostwrite, or research any writer's work.
The paper should be between 1,500 and 2,500 words in length as determined by the word count feature of your word processor.
The due date for the writing assignment is Tuesday, April 1, 2003. You may submit a printed copy in class or email an electronic copy to . Do not forget to submit the appointment form with comments from the writing center consultant.
Engineering Building Room 1333Mail CodePhone: 818.677.6448
E-mail: 8348Fax: 818.677.7062