|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||
|
|
|
Engineering students demo Rube Goldberg devices
That was the question 130 UD Mechanical Engineering 101 students tried to answer Wednesday afternoon, Dec. 7, at the 2005 Rube Goldberg Machine Contest, and answers, naturally, varied wildly. Yet, despite the varying factors of end-of-semester time constraints and general dumpster-diving finesse, three things held constant: ingenuity, duct tape and overall optimism in creativity trumping efficiency. “We’ve done something like this every year for awhile,” Dick Wilkins, professor of mechanical engineering, said, “and this was probably the most optimistic assignment yet. But, it worked out pretty well, and it was clear that participants got a kick out of inventing.” Counted as the practical component of the introductory-level course’s final exam, the task this year was to build a contraption that took at least five steps to turn one page in the MEEG 101 textbook in no less than half a minute and no more than three minutes. Each machine could weigh no more than 40 pounds, cost no more than $50 dollars, be no taller than four feet and contain no animals, explosives, firearms or fire.
“We drove around Newark with this packed sideways in our car,” Kyle Bouchard, a freshman mechanical engineering major from Milford, said of his four-member team’s invention--a 30-pound monstrosity that boasted a solid wooden stool as its supporting structure. “Our goal, really, was to get this to go for at least 30 seconds, and we did,” he said. “It takes seven steps and a little more than half a minute to turn this page.” The ball bearing that teammate Blair Jones, a sophomore mechanical engineering major from Dundalk, Md., dropped between two carefully cantilevered paint-stirrers into a funnel attached to plastic tubing leading to a fretwork of stacked dominoes leading to a mousetrap attached to a tripwire told the rest of the story.
At another end of the Trabant University Center Multipurpose Room where the machine expo was held, Candace Esham, a junior mechanical engineering major from Millsboro, was equally enthusiastic. “Our [machine] is pretty simple,” she said of her four-member team’s creation made primarily from Marbleworks pieces. “We wanted it to be compact, for transportation purposes, and we wanted to be sure it worked. “In order for the page to turn, you want most of the book’s weight on the outside,” she said, demonstrating the first principle of sound mechanical engineering.
The quartet of four-member teams that walked away with top honors included students Kyle Bouchard, of Milford, Raquel Ciappi of Bel Air, Md., Cara Giberson of South Windsor, Conn., and Blair Jones, of Dundalk, Md.; Ying Chen of Newark, Christopher Hazel of Wilmington, Robert Christopher Jones of Fork, Md., and Bradley Miller of Ellicott City, Md.; Matt Bowen of Pennsville, N.J., Andrew Dubina of Millersville, Md., Bassil Salman of East Windsor, N.J., and Joseph Walther of West Nyack, N.Y.; and Joseph Baumgartner of Columbus, N.J., Alicia DeMarco of New Hyde Park, N.Y., Sarah O’Neill of Sterling, Va., and Thomas Petrella of West Grove, Pa. An exposition of senior engineering projects will be held from 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday, Dec. 12, at Clayton Hall. Article by Becca Hutchinson |
|
|
