IntroductionThe Virtual Soil Mechanics LaboratoryCreation of the Web PageEvaluation PlanConclusionsAcknowledgmentsTables1Session 3226The Virtual Soil Mechanics LaboratoryVito A. GuidoThe Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & ArtAbstractThe Virtual Soil Mechanics Laboratory is used in conjunction with the introductoryundergraduate course in Soil Mechanics, which is required of all students majoring in CivilEngineering at the Cooper Union.Integrating the laboratory portion of the introductory Soil Mechanics course with the world wideweb has many significant benefits. At the forefront is the ability to improve the students'perception of the material at hand. An on-line laboratory provides students with the capability toperform experimental calculations directly from their home computers using regular browsers.Furthermore, the availability of the Virtual Soil Mechanics Laboratory on the world wide weballows students from all over the world access to Cooper Union's Virtual Soil MechanicsLaboratory, its manual and procedures.I. IntroductionCivil Engineering is the oldest form of engineering, dating back to ancient Egypt and thebuilding of the great pyramids. Civil Engineering is comprised of Environmental Engineering,Geotechnical Engineering, Hydraulic Engineering, Structural Engineering, TransportationEngineering and many others, such as Geoenvironmental Engineering. The fundamental courseupon which the Geotechnical Engineering field is founded is Soil Mechanics, which is the namegiven to the scientific approach to understanding soil action.Soil Mechanics may be defined as the study of the engineering behavior of soils, with referenceto the design of civil engineering structures made from or in the earth. Its introduction into theUnited States is generally accredited to Dr. Karl Terzaghi and is considered to have occurred in1925.At the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art – Albert Nerken School ofEngineering, Soil Mechanics is a required course for all students majoring in Civil Engineering.It is offered in the spring semester of junior year and is a 4.5 credit course, comprised of threehours of lecture and three hours of laboratory per week. The laboratory has always been anintegral part of the course, where the students perform experiments determining the indexing andstrength properties of soil. A total of eleven experiments are performed:Experiment #1 – Sample PreparationExperiment #2 – Specific Gravity DeterminationExperiment #3 – Grain Size Distribution AnalysisExperiment #4 – Liquid and Plastic Limits of SoilExperiment #5 – Compaction2Experiment #6 – Constant Head Permeability TestExperiment #7 – Variable Head Permeability TestExperiment #8 – Direct Shear Test on Cohesionless SoilExperiment #9 – ConsolidationExperiment #10 – Unconfined Compression TestExperiment #11 – Triaxial Compression Test on Cohesionless SoilThe first five experiments are performed on one soil, usually a glacial till, with the studentsworking in groups of three to four. The soil is analyzed for its suitability as a subgrade soil in aflexible pavement. From this analysis each group of students must design a flexible pavementutilizing an asphalt wearing surface, base course and sub-base course for a given traffic loading.The inclusion of geotextiles and/or geogrids is a requirement of the design. The remaining sixexperiments are performed as an entire class with individual laboratory reports required for eachexperiment. In total, the laboratory accounts for one-third of the grade for each student.Prior to the spring of 1998 the only means of preparation for the Soil Mechanics Laboratory wasa laboratory manual developed in-house. This manual was distributed to each student at the startof the semester and contained the laboratory procedures and data sheets necessary forexperiments 1 to 5. Experiments 6 to 11 had data sheets but no formal laboratory procedurewritten down. The data for all eleven experiments was processed by using a DOS-based "C"program which one would hardly describe as "user-friendly".In the 1996-1997 academic year a project was funded at the Cooper Union by the NSF/GatewayCoalition for the development of a Virtual Soil Mechanics Laboratory. This funding wascontinued in the 1997-98 and 1998-99 academic years, and was the impetus for the developmentof additional formal laboratory procedures for experiments 6 to 11, where none had previouslyexisted.II. The Virtual Soil Mechanics LaboratoryThe Virtual Soil Mechanics Laboratory is a fully functional website that has been used since theSpring of 1998 for instruction with the undergraduate Soil Mechanics course at the CooperUnion. The website address is http://www.cooper.edu/vsoil. It is accessible from any browserboth inside and outside the Cooper Union.Educators are constantly seeking new and improved methods of preparing and presenting theircoursework to students; methods which distill the key information and reduce the potential forconfusion; or which allow for independent study. The use of the world wide web hasincreasingly become significant in this effort, offering a unique and always-visible approach toproviding the coursework for any class, from a simple training course to a full-scale degreeprogram. However, while the web has been available for a number of years, it has only been inthe last couple of years that major advancements in computers and web programming haveenabled this medium to become a robustly-equipped teaching tool.The marriage of course material with the web can highly impact the educational experiencestudents receive. Using the Soil Mechanics course, the objective of the Gateway-funded projectentitled Virtual Soils Mechanics Laboratory was to create an interactive environment that wasboth stimulating and educational, using the latest in web-based technology.3Traditionally, the laboratory information was dispensed through a paper-based manualcontaining only text. The students were required to prepare for each experiment prior to thescheduled laboratory session by reading the procedures associated with the respectiveexperiment. Ideally, it would be most beneficial for the students to witness a live demonstrationof each experiment before conducting it themselves. Due to the limited number of hoursallocated per session and the number of students in each class, this becomes an impossible taskto accomplish. Yet it is important, because it provides students