An Engineering Notebook Documents your Work
Not only do you use an engineering notebook to organize and document your work, it is also a place to reflect on activities and projects. When working in a team, each team member will maintain their own journal to help with collaboration.
Your engineering notebook should have the following:
- An entry for each day or session that you worked on the solution
- Entries that are chronological, with each entry dated
- Clear, neat, and concise writing and organization
- Labels so that a reader understands all of your notes and how they fit into your iterative design process
An entry might include:
- Brainstorming ideas
- Sketches or pictures of prototypes
- Pseudocode and flowcharts for planning
- Any worked calculations or algorithms used
- Answers to guiding questions
- Notes about observations and/or conducted tests
- Notes about and reflections on your different iterations
Extend Your Learning
To connect this activity to a historical instance, ask your students to research Leonardo da Vinci. Known as a famous painter, da Vinci was also a self-taught engineer, creating approximately 30 engineering notebooks, including the renowned Codex Leicester.
To relate this activity to inventions, ask students to research the process of obtaining a patent as well as the role of the engineering notebook in corroborating innovative work.