Case Study
The Scenario
Female wearing VR headset and using controllers to simulate a design.
The following scenario is used to complete the activities outlined in the Next Steps section of this page.
You are working as the Primary Investigator with a Federal Aviation Administration’s Safety Team (FAASTeam). Your particular workgroup has just finished a round of innovative experiments to measure pilot injuries in minor small plane crashes. Now that the experiments have concluded, your task is to spearhead the completion of your team’s final informal laboratory report. Your division managers at the FAA are anxious for your team to report. Your team is smart and talented, but you know they also can have trouble organizing their ideas and applying the correct format. The final work of actually writing the report falls on you.
Before the report deadline, you call your most veteran teammate, Margaret Farnsworth to summarize the experiment’s key background and context. Margaret explains:
These were very exciting, needed experiments, and I imagine their results will yield valuable insights into how small plane cockpits can be designed and maybe even regulated to improve pilot safety. In a lot of ways, what we’ve done as a team represents the FAA taking a serious step into modernizing its approach to studying flight and crash safety.
I can still remember the old Controlled Impact Demonstration series back in 1984, out at Edwards. I was out there on my one of my first assignments, and it was a spectacle to see that fully-fueled Boeing 720 smash into the desert. That fireball! Whoever thought to crash a plane by remote control?
It really brings me full-circle to the same kind of experiment so late in my career. I’m glad we got to focus on small planes this time. From my time in the archives, there are somewhere around 115 small plane crashes in the United States every year. Whatever their cause, pilots of small planes often face serious, even life-changing injury. According to our internal records, 15 pilots died in small plane crashes across the US last year, and many more thousands suffered severe, even critical injuries to their heads, torsos, arms, and legs. Bless their hearts.
Anyway, I pulled out a bunch of historical data out of the system. We should include it in the report. Some of those dinosaurs like me in the Regional Office need to know about the actual human life and limb at-stake in our work. I sent what I had to Geoff…
After thanking Margaret and hanging up, you email engineer Barbara Roberts to clarify their perspective on the experiments’ objectives. Barbara replies with the following email: Robert’s Email (DOCX)Download Robert’s Email (DOCX)
Next, you walk down the hall to chat with programmer Geoff Kamehameha about experiments’ materials and procedures. Geoff gladly recounts the team’s work:
Well, our crash experiments certainly weren’t as fun as what they got to do back in the 80s, that’s for sure. Instead of crashing actual planes we gamed the entire thing. I mean, our partnership with ERAU and use of their HubTM Simulation Software made the entire thing cheap and easy, so there’s that.
I mean, plus, not like we could ever get the budget for actual plane crashes any more, and crashing airplanes on purpose seems very wasteful, dangerous, and potentially damaging to the natural environment. So instead, we simulated the entire thing. Pretty dang cool. We got to program in all the details, all the way down to the airframe and weather. I chose the Cessna 172 Skyhawk. Since we’re partnered with ERAU and they fly so many of them, I thought it was a cool egg to throw in. We kept the weather partly cloudy with a ceiling of 1,000 feet, a five knot headwind and visibility at three miles. We even simulated a THOR-AV-50M crash-test dummy. Spare no expense, right?!
The plane’s pitch angle was controlled at 10 degrees for all model sets. The first model set the plane’s impact velocity angle at 15 degrees, with an impact velocity of 30 meters per second. The second model set the plane’s impact angle at 30 degrees, with an impact velocity of 38 meters per second. The third model set the plane’s impact angle at 45 degrees, with an impact velocity 41 meters per second.
Farnsworth sent me something the other day, I’ll throw it together with the specifics and blast it over your way; no worries.
When you return to your office, you’ve received the following .excel file with the key experiment result data, as well as the historical data from Margaret: Key Experiment Result Data (XLSX)Download Key Experiment Result Data (XLSX)
Finally, you email Samuel Uchiha, who you know has a keen eye and takes extensive notes about details most people miss. Samuel replies with the following email: Uchiha Email (DOCX)Download Uchiha Email (DOCX)
With all of your team’s input, contributions, and perspectives in-hand, you set about the work of developing and formatting the informal laboratory report.
Directions:
For this assignment, interpret, complete, and format the lab report presented in the Module 7 – Case Study: FAASTeam Lab Report. Using the dialogue from the case study, provided notes, as well as the raw data, finish your team’s lab report.
To complete the report, you must produce the following.
Cover page.
Introduction section synthesizing and interpreting the case study’s central research problem and context.
Procedures section synthesizing and interpreting the experiment’s procedures, equipment and instrumentation, and data collection and analysis methods.
Results and Discussion section synthesizing and interpreting the results of the case study’s experiments, as well as providing commentary and explaining the results.
Conclusions section synthesizing and interpreting the connections between the case study’s purpose and its findings, as well as any recommendations based on its results.
At least three new data visualizations based on the case study’s raw data.
Use current APA formatting for Informal Lab Reports and ensure that your report is free of grammar, spelling, and mechanical errors.