essay assingment

ENGG 123, September, 2017

1

ENGG123

Assignment No. 2

Due date: Wednesday October 11 th

, 2017, 7:00 AM

Engineering Disasters

General instructions Submissions

Submit your completed assignment via the Turnitin function on the ENGG 123 UR Courses

site (the assignments section) on or prior to the due date and time. Your submission should be

in one Microsoft Office Word file. Assignment 2 requires students to produce a brief formal paper that deals with an engineering

disaster. The minimum length of the paper is five-double spaced pages and the maximum

length is seven double-spaced pages (Times New Roman font size 11), not including your

references page. An effective paper will pose and answer a number of the questions listed

below. (You do not need to answer all of these questions)

 How is it an engineering disaster?

 Which particular aspects of the disaster are the results of a poor engineering choice or practice?

 How is it relevant to the study and practice of engineering?

 Who was at fault? What caused the accident?

 What future precautions are recommended?

 Were any new laws, practices, or regulations implemented as a result of the disaster?

 What was the overall impact on engineering practice?

 Did the accident change engineering practice?

In order to be able to answer the above questions about an engineering disaster, you should prepare a brief literature review. And, you must complete the following four key tasks: 1. Select a disaster to assess which is NOT on the Banned Topics list. 2. Locate a minimum of three useful sources from the academic and/or professional literature 3. Compose a paper that conforms to the formatting guidelines presented in this document; 4. Employ the American Psychological Association (APA) citation and referencing system presented on the Purdue Owl Writing Lab website https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/05/ Task 1 Select an engineering disaster

You are required to select a real engineering disaster from history. The disaster’s cause should be

related to faulty engineering, a design flaw for example. This means that disasters related to

things such as ethical issues or corrupt practices are not suitable for your paper (e.g. a company

knowingly does not fully disclose information that ultimately causes danger and harm).

Banned Topics List

The list of disasters that you cannot write about is posted on our URCourses home page under

the heading Topic 3 Assignments.

ENGG 123, September, 2017

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Task 2 Locate a minimum of three sources

At least three of the sources you employ in your literature review must be from the academic

and/or professional literature. Acceptable sources include the following:

* peer reviewed academic journal articles;

* peer reviewed academic books;

* official publications of professional engineering associations;

*official government or judicial reports on the disaster; and,

*certain evidentiary documents such as company reports, and sometimes eyewitness reports.

How to locate sources

Our University of Regina Library provides instruction and assistance in locating academic

sources. The university has a number of search engines available and can provide students with

free access to many academic journals and e-books. In addition, basic online searches (e.g.,

Google searches) can help you locate journal articles on many topics e.g., “peer reviewed articles

Three Mile Island,” would lead you to a series of academic journal articles on this topic.

Task 3 Formatting Guidelines The items presented below describe the format and style you are to employ for this paper. Check the details presented in the class about “Formal Paper” writing.

 Do not provide a title page for this paper.

 Place the name and number of the assignment, your name and the date of submission, and the title of your paper at the top of the first page of the paper.

 Do not provide a Table of Contents for this paper.

 Be concise, do not make the mistake of using a narrative (literary story) style.

 Do not write in the first person (e.g., do not use I or me).

 If you employ tables, you do not require lists of tables and figures for a paper that is this short.

 You must use the APA citation/referencing system in this paper. Introduction

Your introduction should not be much more than 1 ½ pages in length. It should include the

following items:

Purpose: i.e., your research questions

Begin with a statement of purpose that identifies the name and date of the disasters and poses

your principal research question(s). Once you have read about the disaster you should feel

comfortable about the sorts of questions you can effectively answer. It is often useful to select

one main question along with two or three subsidiary questions. A suitable question for many

papers might be: What were the flaws in engineering design that led to this disaster?

Conceptual clarification

Your research questions should be followed by a section on concept clarification. What do you

mean by “disaster?” What is an engineering disaster? You should also define any technical

terms that feature prominently in the paper and may not be understood by your audience.

Methodological statement

You must include a statement indicating the methodology you employed to answer your research

question. In the case of this paper the methodology will be a brief assessment of the literature or

ENGG 123, September, 2017

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a literature review. If your paper focuses on a few sources, they should be cited in your

methodological statement.

Analysis section

The analysis section should be the longest part of your paper.

Background statement

You can begin your analysis section with a very brief overview of the basic, undisputed facts that

describe the disaster. You might describe the structures involved, the date they were completed,

when they failed, how many people were killed or injured if any and perhaps the economic and

other social costs of the disaster. For a paper that is this short your background statement should

be no more than two paragraphs in length.

Argument points

The bulk of the analysis section involves your effort to present points which help to answer your

research question. Each of the points you make should be supported by evidence provided by one

of your sources and be supported by a citation and reference for the citation. You should

logically explain how the point you make helps answer your question(s). There should be one or

more points made for each of your questions.

Disputes and alternatives

If you run across disputed evidence or examples of alternative explanations for your questions,

you should indicate as much in the text of your paper. Some writers add a discussion section at

the end of their analysis to summarize their findings, assess alternative arguments and tie up

loose ends. Most writers leave the discussion tasks to their conclusion.

Conclusion In your conclusion, you make direct reference to your original research questions. You can simply summarize them, but can repeat them word for word if necessary. You should indicate whether the analysis answered your questions and briefly summarize the key points of the analysis if necessary. You should honestly indicate whether a research question was effectively answered. If you failed

to answer a question you should try to explain why. You should indicate what might be done in a

future research effort to answer the question - more research, more data, more time?

At the very end of your conclusion you can include an optional “affective” statement. An

affective statement is where you can briefly state what the outcome of your research says about

the need to prevent similar disasters, or what the impact of studying this disaster is for you

personally. The affective statement is the one portion of the paper where the use of the first

person (I, me) is permitted.

References

Your paper ends with a references section which should be prepared based on the APA format.

You must have a reference for each of the sources cited in the text.

Task 4 use APA As was already noted in these instructions you are required to employ the APA in-text citation and referencing system as presented in the Purdue Owl writing lab and also available in communication lecture notes.