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An essential part of your engineering education is building your awareness and foundational knowledge of topics. It's important to not make assumptions, and to fully understand concepts, techniques, material properties, and technologies that interlink and build upon each other making increasingly complex and advanced designs feasible.
Good engineers always double check their facts, and never assume that their first approach is the best or only way forward. When you encounter a concept or term that's new to you or you're rusty on remembering, look them up in these authoritative sources.
Through doing this you grow your understanding, allowing you to more effectively search for specialized knowledge inside advanced resources like Scopus. When reading these advanced papers you will encounter terms that are unfamiliar. Rather than just going on ahead hoping you'll figure it out, pause, look up the term, then resume. This will allow you to not just read but comprehend and build useful knowledge.
Two excellent eBook collections containing in-depth overviews written by engineering experts, as well as essential resources such as Ashby charts, and engineering calculators for common equations are:
The overarching Library Research Guide for Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering has several specialized resources you will become familiar with during your time here at UWaterloo. For your projects in ME 100, Dr. Milne has selected the interdisciplinary database Scopus to help you practice and build the information skills you'll need.
Using high quality evidence in your engineering research, design, and practice is essential to acting with integrity. Clearly showing the evidence you've utilized ensures your credibility, the safety of those who depend on your work, and your reputation. Additionally, by properly citing your sources of information, you situate your work in larger engineering conversations to demonstrate how your work adds value, and fits within the collective body of knowledge.
Depending on your area of research, you will be required to cite your evidence in a variety of different standardized citation formats. These are known as "citation styles". Citation style guides provide guidance and examples of how to correctly format your citations to align with the unique specifications of each citation style.
Proper citation of evidence is an integral part of being a STEM student. The University of Waterloo's Library has created an online module, "Citing your Sources" to provide an overview of how to appropriately incorporate outside sources, including when and how to add citations to your work.