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ME LEARNING TEAM MEMBERS PARTICIPATE IN CATAPULT
DESIGN COMPETITION
 Since Spring 2002, the Mechanical Engineering
Learning Teams (MELTs) have been doing some sort of
problem-solving component competition in the Spring
semesters. The idea behind this is that most problems
engineers encounter often require innovative and unique
solutions. To come up with unique and innovative solutions
requires a “thinking outside of the box” approach. The
initial hypothesis was that the problem solving skills of
first and second year engineering students are weak to
non-existent, therefore, we wanted to develop and implement
activities that would actively engage them in
problem-solving situations. Beginning in the Spring 2002
(and in every spring semester) we have posed a
problem-solving challenge for the learning team participants
to solve in their own unique way using some guidance from
their respective peer mentor.
Spring 2004 brought about the problem of projecting an egg
as far as possible without the egg breaking. Needless to
say, most of the devices built to solve this problem were
constructed using compressed air. Please look at the
pictures and video to what was developed. The winning team
shot their egg approximately 850 yards without the egg
breaking.
For the Spring 2005 semester, the problem posed to the MELTs
was to construct an outdoor water balloon catapult and have
a competition. There were two components to the competition:
an accuracy challenge where academic advisor and learning
community coordinator, Doug Beck, was the target; and a
head-to-head double elimination catapult battle. The
competition was held among the learning teams in late April
2005 in the open area north of Howe Hall. The learning team
designs that were the most accurate (3 shots) firing at Doug
40-60 feet away AND that finished strongly in the battle
component were deemed the top three winners ranked first
through third. All participants had a great time and learned
quite a bit. The following are some of the comments from
MELT participants:
The whole design and building process was a good way for
the whole learning team to interact together outside of the
class room. Everyone got to know each other at a different
perspective.
This was a good course and competition and I recommend it to
anyone.
I had a lot of fun, and I thought the rules were fair and
allowed the teams to really pit their designs against each
other. This case was much better than that of last year.
Then, instead of a battle of designs, the competition boiled
down to who had the most free time and resources to devote
to working on their machine, and who was willing to spend
the most money on their egg launcher. I hope that upcoming
competitions continue to be run like this year’s challenge.
It was much fairer, overall.
Click
here to see photos from the 2004 egg launch competition...
Click here
to see videos from the 2004 egg launch competition...
Click here
to see photos from the 2005 catapult competition...
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