Basic ME design problem

I had a good one in a team builing course...
Give 'em loads of news paper and sellotape. They have to build the tallest structure they can in the time given.

With a bit of good design they should get 6 foot plus pretty easy.

(My team won of course )

Give 'em loads of news paper and sellotape. They have to build the tallest structure they can in the time given.

Yes this one works well and is quick and easy to setup and run. A small scale bridge building exercise to see who can build a structure that will hold the most weight works well too but requires more time.

Both give some good basics into design and can be used to good effect to help explain how we can seem to build impossibly tall and strong structures without going into materials science and manufacturing process.

Del, you wern't feeling good that day or what?

I had to do this exact task, and my team's effort won at 23 feet.

We failed miserably, however on the concours d'elegance award.

Still, as an engineer I'm only required to make it work, not to make it look good. That's the designer's job!

Egg drop is always a good one..

Give them some basic materials, box, packing material, let them design a container and then see which teams egg can survive the highest drop...

Kept me entertained at a ASME student competition one year...

Whatever you do...don't talk about yourself. Pick some notable individuals who have accomplished engineering problems/solutions and profile them and thier lives as engineers.

You have the greatest set of supplies in items that are normally disgarded as trash to define the strength of those materials along with thier potential re-use in the common market. Paper and plastic are abundant forms of trash that can be used to fabricate some pretty cool stuff.

As mentioned above span bridges with newspaper and tape...another is plastic drink bottles, displacement, hydraulics and pneumatics.

Just some ideas...

don't talk about yourself

I would qualify that.

By all means talk about your experiences, what you learned from them. Just don't build yourself up too much. That will turn off your audience real quick.

People like to hear stories about other people's experiences, especially if it's funny and there's a lesson in there. It tells them that schooling isn't just about learning formulas. It's also about building character and teaching you how to handle things and all that.

A bit about "my old teacher was right!" is a real winner with the instructors and tells the kids that what their teachers have been drilling into their heads actually has some use in the future.

If you must speak about someone else, better research about them and limit your talk to what you've found out. The nice thing about talking about yourself is that you don't need to research.

Above all, teens get bored easily so make your presentation fun and lively. A game like "whoever answers correctly gets a prize" is one technique.

Thanks for all the input so far.

I definatly don't want to ramble about myself, but I'm supposed to talk about my job, and other things ME's do. So far I like the ideas supplied. I remember doing the egg drop in high school and it worked well. We did the bridge and tower things too. But then again my school had a class for 'future engineers' where we got to design and build all sorts of stuff.

Thanks again.

Chris

They sure like to hear embarrassing stories of cock up you have made.
I always try and publicise my mistakes...it makes others realise that they don't need to cover 'em up...and that we can all learn from them.

exactly!

One of the most entertaining courses I took in university was failure analysis.

The lecturer was often called in as an expert witness whenever a cock up of monumental proportions had occurred (tanker explodes while being loaded, the dock blames the tanker, the tanker blames the dock).

He had great, real world examples of catastrophic (Del-a-strophic??) failures, and would take us through step by step the evidence he found and the conclusions that were reached,

Fascinating!

Del-a-strophic... I like that. I think it has now become a permanent part of the CR4 vernacular...

<...Del-a-strophic...>

< Now, I have to entertain ~35-40 high school students for about an hour, telling them what I do, what schooling is needed, and what other career paths are out there for a ME. >

You have a job in hand - to entertain-to capture the minds of the 35>40-

-To brainwash them to look forward to become ME's. So do a good job of it.

Dramatize to a crescendo!

Tell them:

Who designed/built bicycles/cars/Harleys/Boeings/Apollos/Space Shuttles---_ME's

Who designed cruise liners and built them and run them------------------ ME's

Who designed and built Steel plants,Power Houses ----------------------ME's

Who Designed/Built NUCLEAR Power Stations and Bombs ------------------ME's

You can go on and on and on. Everything at all has been -- By -----ME's

And that all that Civil engineers say they do would not have been -without--ME's

Same for EE's -- how would they have generated/Transmitted/Utilized -W/O---ME's

I have a feeling- you could not do the Job in 1 HOUR--You need maybe 3!

Best of imagining/acting ---to a grand Finalé.

Good one...

Maybe ask them to take out their mobile phones.. look at the hinge and slide mechanisms and the key pad...how were they designed?

The possibilites are endless... maybe take a chair that is pre-rigged to collapse when you sit on it... then discus the design, weaknesses etc.

Ask 'em if anything they own has broken recently.... mind that sort of tactic can backfire...
Hey it sounds fun can I come too...?

Del

sure, but I'm not flying you over!

Do invite Del D'Cat as the best moderator you can ever muster!

It will be Hilarious

Kids will be Sold to 'ME or bust'

Thanks everyone for your input and suggestions. I ended up going with the egg drop, and limited their resources, design, and build time. It turned out pretty good and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Chris