It is very important to note that the author of these reports can have no stake in the outcome of the report. Many students have difficulty deciding on a topic for this assignment. Your topic must be related to your major and describe a problem that must be solved, including the criteria by which the candidate solution(s) will be evaluated. Some consumer products make good topics for these reports, as long as you can justify their relation to your major. A very simple example problem is that an undergraduate mechanical engineering student must have a scientific calculator that has specific functions in order to complete homework and exams. You cannot use consumer products such as cell phones, gaming computers, household appliances, cars, etc.

The use of effective research strategies is extremely critical to writing a credible report. Because you should use numerical data, you will need to find the technical specifications for most candidate solutions. You should be able to find technical specifications and pricing information on most manufacturers' or retailers' websites. When including data collected from a website, you should always provide a complete URL and the date on which you accessed the information in the References section of your paper. If you obtain information from a physical location, you should provide the location and date on which you visited that location.

Important information:

In addition to writing the report, please answer these questions: After deciding a topic , you should answer the following questions:

1 -Identify the problem you will be addressing as specifically as possible. (Criteria are listed in the description above. For a recommendation report, you must select 2-4 candidate solutions. Regardless of your topic, you must select 3-5 criteria for evaluating your candidate solution[s].

2- How many criteria will you be using to evaluate your candidate solution(s)? Name them.