Published Curriculum and Other Works
In the past years I had the opportunity to participate in the Texas A&M E3 (Enrichment Experiences in Engineering) Program, in the University of Houston RET (Research Experiences for Teachers) Program. and in the PATHS-UP RET (Precise Advanced Technologies and Health Systems for Under-served Populations) at Rice University. Under the supervision of distinguished researchers, I worked short projects immersed in leading-edge research in engineering.
Summer 2013. Working with Dr, Devesh Ranjan, I developed, using MS-Excel VBA, a simulator for heat diffusion in one-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic media.
Summer 2014. Under the supervision of Dr. Cunjiang Yu, I performed the statistical analysis of the change in dimensions produced by the fabrication process on nano-circuits.
Summer 2015, Under the supervision of Dr. Mina Dawood, I made an statistical analysis of the mean lives of cracked steel structures repaired with different configurations of patches of carbon fiber.
Summer 2018. Working with Dr. Ashutosh Sabharwal, I developed a graphical interface (GUI) to fit harmonics for the Photoplethysmographic signal obtained from a pulse oximeter, The GUI was developed in Python and MS-Excel
Assign-4 Poster.pdfCopy of RET-MiguelRamirez-Poster-Final.pdfCopy of RET2015-MiguelRamirez-Poster.pdfMRamirez-RET_Rice_Poster-Final.pdfFrom each one of the above projects, a lesson and an activity were created, giving to GPHS students the opportunity to be engaged in classwork related with state-of-the-art research in engineering. These lessons and activities were submitted to the k-12 web based digital curriculum library TeachEngineering, were engineers and experienced teachers reviewers evaluated and made suggestions and corrections to these lessons-activities, aligned to high educational standards. Once a lesson or activity met the required standards is accepted to be published in the TeachEngineering website. At present GPHS is a curricular contributor for this recognized and awarded digital collection.
For my past years AP Statistics classes, the next lessons-activities were developed and accepted as part of the TeachEngineering digital library (click on image to open link):
Because of the great impact these high standards lessons-activities have had on my students , and the great feedback and learning obtained by myself during the writing and revision processes, I want to give to my students more high quality lessons where they find an engineering application of the concepts learned in class. For my AP Calculus classes I have created the next lessons-activities (click on image to open link):
This Activity was selected as July 2017 TeachEngineering Editor's Pick
The TeachEngineering team has created for this activity, a short explanatory video for teachers and students. Click-on the image below to watch this video:
Note: The above activity was also posted in www.academia.edu on November 2016, and by October-31-2024 has received 217 views, and has been downloaded 37 times...
The TeachEngineering team has created for this activity, a short explanatory video for teachers and students. Click-on the image below to watch this video:
The above activity: "Mathematically Designing a Frictional Roller Coaster" has been selected twice as Teach Engineering Editor's Pick, first in October 2019 and again in October 2021:
The TeachEngineering team has created for this activity, a short explanatory video for teachers and students. Click on the image below to watch this video:
These submissions were published in July 14, 2020:
Other Academic Works
I also like to write about some interesting results obtained during class or coming from projects given to students. The next writings have been uploaded in Academia.edu.
By Oct-31- 2024, these papers have 330 followers, 1,417 readers (505 classified as Highly Engaged), 3 public mentions, and 7,812, since the first two papers were posted in December-28-2017
By October 31-2024, my article The Great Pyramid of Giza, Pi, and the Golden Ratio, posted on December-28-2017, has received 5,850 views at www.academia.edu (An average of 2 views per day!!), and has been downloaded 824 times! (An average of about 2 downloads per week!). This papaer is on the top 4% of most viewed papers in this website. Here is a snapshot of the performance of this paper in Academia.edu web page.
A good achievement for a paper written as a reference for a High School AP Calculus project... Next is a downloadable copy of this article:
The Great Pyramid OF Giza Pi and the Golden Ratio1.pdfBy October 31-2024, my article The Great Pyramid of Giza, An Optimized Geometry?, posted in www.academia.edu on February-20-2020, has 820 views, and has been downloaded 145 times. Not bad for a the paper containing the solution of a High School AP Calculus project...
The Great Pyramid of Giza - An Optimized Geometry.pdfBy October 31-2024, my article A Note About the Slant of the Optimized Right Pyramids, posted in www.academia.edu on December-28-2017, has 135 views, and has been downloaded 44 times. This paper was also created as a reference for an AP Calculus Project
A Note about the Constant Slant of Optimized Right Pyramids.pdfIn this paper, posted in www.academia.edu on May-27-2020, I presented an original idea to find the value of the fundamental trigonometric limit that is the key in all introductory Calculus courses to solve many other trigonometric limits and obtain other important results. No textbook or lesson I have found with this approach, or any other kind of explanation or practical example, other than the derivative of the function sine using the limit definition, where this fundamental limit can be found or be necessary, it just "magically appears" as a Theorem at the beginning of the trigonometric limits section, and used. By October 31 -2024 this paper has 347 views, and has been downloaded 57 times.
The Calculus Fundamental Trigonometric Limit and the Circle.pdfIn a Calculus course, students learn that squares are optimized rectangles, this is, squares are the rectangles having the maximum area and minimum perimeter. In this paper I present patterns found when optimizing subdivided rectangles. During the past ten years I have been teaching my students to solve this kind of problems, but I have to say that I never was aware of these patterns until a non-Calculus student used them to quickly solve one of these problems. I decided then explore this special patterns and write my findings. This paper was posted in www.academia.edu on December-13-2021, and by October 31-2024 has had 59 views and has been downloaded 14 times.
The Optimization of the Area of Any Rectangle with a Constant Perimeter.pdfMy AP Calculus activity Volumes of Complex Solids originally published in www.teachengineering.org, was also posted in www.academia.edu on November 2016, and by October 31 - 2024 has received 217 views, and has been downloaded 37 times...
Volumes_Of_Complex_Solids.pdfMy hobby, collecting slide rules, gives me great learning moments. The use of these mechanical caculators not only makes you use your numerical sense and mental math, but also makes you play with your Arithmetic Concepts and your Algebraic skills, and to re-write the expressions you want to evaluate in more efficient ways. I wrote the next paper to introduce my students in the use of a simple slide rules to evaluate complex algebraic expressions. Remember that a slide rule is the materialization of the rules of logarithms, and that these were invented to simplify annoying operations involving multiplications and divisions, or powers and roots.
By October 31, 2024, this paper, uploaded in May 15th , 2024, has had 45 views and has been dowmloaded 6 times.
The Power of the Mannheim-Polyphase and Rietz Slide Rules.pdfThis is a snapshot taken on October 31-2024, of the views and downloads counting summary in www.academia.edu, for the above papers:
