Abstract:

The Degree in Mechanical Engineering of the Defense Univerisity Center of the Naval Academy (Marín, Spain) has academic disciplines of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). The teaching of the STEM subjects must emphasize the association of the physical, chemical and mathematical concepts with the real world. In order to achieve this goal, there are several tools available which must be used properly. One of the most promising tools is the iPython notebook.

The iPython notebooks can be defined as a scientific interactive framework. They can contain text, mathematical equations, interactive graphs and videos. Also, they allow to run Python, Julia or R programming languages codes. Furthermore, they are open source and free with a strong support of the scientific community in the last years. They are pretended to be used as an agile tool for scientific divulgation. The iPython notebook guarantees the repeatability of any data analysis or simulation because it contains the data, the algorithms and the results.

In the present work, the use of the iPython notebooks is proposed as a tool in the Manufacturing Engineering and Dimensional Quality subject taught in the fourth year of the degree. A iPython notebook may be used in a laboratory session for simulating and optimizing logistic processes (e.g. increasing the production rate, decreasing the idle periods and costs, optimizing the routes, ...). This notebook will contain the theoretical concepts, the objectives and the instructions of the lab session.

Keywords:

STEM, python, notebook, interactive, framework.