Welcome to the University of Iowa's online version of Material and Energy Balances. This introductory lesson will orient you to this Web site (in terms of both the layout and navigational features of this site, and in terms of the software and hardware you will need to view the features of this site).
This web course includes a setup page which students can access before they enroll in the course. The purpose of the setup page is to help you understand what hardware, software, and network connectivity you will need to fully benefit from the course. You can test whether your system is adequate for the course, and make decisions before enrolling if there are capabilities required for the course which your current system does not support.
For example, audio narrations are used extensively in 052:041; if your computer does not have an audio card, you would need to purchase and install one to benefit fully from the course's Web pages. By testing your system via the setup pages before enrolling, you could know this and make an informed decision about whether attending the course is still within your budget. Also, by using the setup pages you can be sure that all software required for the course is installed on your computer, and thus can concentrate on the course content when the semester starts instead of worrying about or wasting time with software or hardware installation.
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To proceed with a lesson, click on the orange "go next page" arrow below. If you do not finish a lesson in a single session, note the page that you are on when you quit. When you want to continue this lesson, you can jump immediately to the page you left off at by selecting the appropriate page from the popup menu below the "go next page" arrow. Note: the popup menu relies on JavaScript, which is explained on page 4 of this first lesson. If the popup menu does not work,see below to help you activate and test JavaScript. |
In order to view the pages of this site, you will need access to at least:
or
You will need a 14.4 kbps or faster modem or a direct connection to the Internet (as is found in many on-campus computer labs).
You will need a fairly recent version of one of the main Web browsing software programs, either version 3.0 or newer of Netscape Navigator (or Communicator) or version 3.0 or newer of Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Audio is used extensively throughout this course. Narrations accompany many of the lesson pages. In order to hear these audio clips, your computer may need to have a sound card if the ability to play audio is not already built into the computer.
You will need to download and install on your computer the RealPlayer software from RealNetworks in order to listen to the sound clips on this site. You can get the RealPlayer software from RealNetworks' Web site at http://www.real.com/. Note: RealNetworks has both a commercial (you have to pay for) and a free version of the RealPlayer software. The free version of RealPlayer is adequate for use with this course. RealNetworks would prefer that you puchase the commercial version, which has more features. The commercial version is, not surprisingly, much easier to find at the RealNetworks Web site. However, if you look closely, you should be able to find the free version there as well.
Once you have downloaded the RealPlayer software, follow the instructions supplied by RealNetworks to install the software on your computer. You may wish to configure your Web browser software to automatically play audio clips using the RealPlayer software whenever you click on an audio link. The details of how you configure your browser vary from browser to browser, and from one version to another. You may need to consult instructions that came with your browser, or you may need to consult Web pages at the site of the company that makes your browser, to find out how to configure your browser.
As an example, here are the steps to configure your browser if you are using version 3 of Netscape Navigator on a Macintosh:
If you are unable to set up your Web browser to automatically open RealPlayer, you can still play the audio clips in this site. Start up the RealPlayer program before you want to listen to some audio, and leave it running in the background on your computer. Then click on an audio clip link on one of the pages of this site - as long as RealPlayer is running in the background, it should play the audio clip for you.
Once you have intalled and set up the RealPlayer software, click on the button below to test your computer's ability to play audio clips:
Pages with accompanying narrations will have links to the audio clip or clips along the left side of the screen (above the "Help" item at the top of the list of menu choices). If there is only one audio clip for the page (which is true for most pages), click on the audio button/icon to play the narration. If there are two or more audio clips on a single page, click on "Clip 1", "Clip 2", etc., (below the speaker button) to listen to the narrations sequentially.
Some pages have audio clips associated with specific paragraphs of text on the page. In such cases, a smaller audio icon/button appears next to the paragraph, as shown below. Click on the small audio icon/button to hear the sound clip.
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Click on the small audio icon/button to the left of this paragraph to hear the audio clip associated with this portion of the text. |
If you want to pause an audio clip while it is playing, make sure you click on the "Pause" button, not the "Stop" button, on the RealPlayer controller. If you use the "Pause" button, the audio will begin playing again where you left off immediately when you click the button again. If you use the "Stop" button instead, when you resume playing the audio clip it will start over from the beginning and there will be a delay while the first part of the audio file is downloaded.
The RealPlayer software also supports the playing of video clips on your computer. Some of the videos used in this Web site rely on the RealPlayer software; if you have RealPlayer set up so that it plays audio clips correctly, the RealVideo clips should work properly as well. Some of the videos and animations used in this site rely on another piece of software, Apple's QuickTime. QuickTime is described later in Lesson 1 (on page 5) and in the Help section of this site.
Some of the interactive features of this site use the JavaScript scripting language, which is built into most Web browser software. JavaScript must be "turned on" or "enabled" in order for such interactive features to work. In most cases, JavaScript support will be "on" by default when you install your Web browser software, and you will not have to do anything to use JavaScript-reliant features unless you have turned "off" JavaScript.
To test whether JavaScript is enabled on your computer, click on the "Answer" button below. If JavaScript is "on", a small window with the answer to the question should appear. Click on the "Close" button to dismiss that window.
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What is the name of this course? |
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If the "answer window" did not appear, you need to turn on JavaScript support in your browser. How you do so depends on which Web browser software you are using (Internet Explorer or Netscape), which platform you are on (Mac or PC), and which version of the browser software you are using. You may need to consult the documentation for your browser software to determine how to enable JavaScript support.
Example - to enable JavaScript in version 3 of Netscape Navigator on a Macintosh:
Note: JavaScript and Java, despite the similarity of their names, are entirely separate languages. This site makes use of JavaScript. However, you do not need Java to view this Web site.
This site includes some animations which illustrate engineering concepts. To view those animations, you will need Apple Computer's QuickTime software, which is available for both Windows-based PCs and for Macintosh computers.
QuickTime software is available from Apple Computer, Inc., at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/. Download the QuickTime software appropriate for your computer and operating system from Apple's Web site, and follow the supplied instructions to install it on your computer. Make sure you install the portions of the software which enable viewing of QuickTime movies via Web browsers. Some of the videos in this site require features not found in older versions of QuickTime; you may have to download and re-install the latest version of QuickTime if you have an older version of QuickTime installed on your computer. Make sure that the version of QuickTime you are using is version 3.0 or newer. Note that Apple distributes (for a fee) a "Pro" version of QuickTime. You do not need the "Pro" version of QuickTime to view the animations and vidoes used in this site; the standard version which Apple distributes for free is adequate. Your computer may play a "commercial" suggesting you purchase the upgrade to the "Pro" version of QuickTime after you initially install the free version on your computer.
After you have installed QuickTime on your system, try playing the simple animation which appears below. Click on the right-facing arrow on the controller bar along the bottom of the animation to start the animation.
A few videos used in this site rely on the RealPlayer software, instead of QuickTime. RealPlayer was described earlier.
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