Dumb female here. Check engine light came on, noticed this part hanging from the right side. Literally was laying on the ground. It is connected to a little hose...looks like it snapped off. Any ideas?

 

Is that the front or the back? Under the engine? Get the code read and it will tell you what is wrong. Welcome to DF.

 

I'm with jkeaton... It is most likely under the engine or near the fuel tank. The sensor is plastic and a slip fit, so, it wouldn't be in the exhaust system and since it isn't threaded, it wouldn't be in a fluid environment. My WAG would be a pollution control sensor in and air stream or vacuum environment and it would fit inside a grommeted hole where friction would hold it in place and provide a seal. A good read on the error code in the OBD II system would tell you exactly where it fits.

You aren't a "dumb" female. Just not educated in automotive mechanics, and trust me, in today's automobiles there are a lot of "uneducated" men out there, too! If you don't do any maintenance on your car yourself, then any half way proficient auto shop should be able to read the code and then find where it goes. If you do some maintenance yourself, then the first thing you need to get is a code reader. A cheap one like this: would be better than nothing (I prefer Actron devices and I've got three; two small ones that stay in my daily drivers and a big, top of the line job that I use for serious diagnostics. Even the cheap one, though can be a big bonus to even someone who doesn't do any of their own work; if the light comes on, you can check what it is that is causing the problem so that you'll at least know what the root cause is before you take it to the shop (that way the shop will be less likely to try and rip you off for more repairs that are necessary). If you do some maintenance yourself, it would tell you, generically, where that sensor goes and you could look for an empty hole that it fits in. Given my analysis of what it probably is in the above paragraph, you can even do that now. It will probably go into a reasonably big pipe, maybe the air supply (could be an air flow sensor or air temperature sensor) and the hole would be within the range of the wire that connects it... Not rocket science, most of it isn't, but, with the newer computers and paraphernalia that accompanies them it can get confusing. For today's automobiles, IMHO, everyone should have, at least, a basic code reader; so much of the vehicles operation depends on knowing what that CEL (check engine light) really means.