We apply a "tutorial design process", which has proven to be successful for a number of physics topics, to design curricular materials or "tutorials" aimed at improving student understanding of important concepts in a university-level introductory materials science and engineering course. The process involves the identification…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine if university students could accurately extract information from graphs presented in 2D or 3D formats with different colour hue variations or solid black and white. Design/methodology/approach: Participants are presented with 2D and 3D bar and pie charts in a PowerPoint presentation and are asked to…

The use of quantitative graphics in newspapers requires achieving a balance between being accurate and getting the attention of the reader. The statistical representations in newspapers are drawn by graphic designers whose key technique is fusion--the striking combination of two visual images. This technique often results in visual puns,…

For decades, every chemical engineer has been asked to have a background in separations. The required separations course can, however, be uninspiring and superficial because understanding many separation processes involves conventional graphical methods and commercial process simulators. We utilize simple, user-­friendly mathematical software,…