First-year engineering students present projects at annual design day
Visiting middle and high school students gathered in groups around parents and first-year engineering students to watch hovercrafts glide across the floor and speed toward the finish line.
The 16th annual Freshman Engineering Design Day at NC State is an opportunity for first-year engineering student teams to create and design a project to showcase and compete for awards.
The annual event held in the McKimmon Center is sponsored by the College of Engineering and its First Year Engineering Program and is part of the E 101 – Introduction to Engineering and Problem Solving course. It is here that students are tasked to put core design concepts into practice during their first semester while learning how to work successfully in a design team.
With a $40 spending limit, teams had to be creative with their limited budgets to create hovercrafts, canoes made of concrete, bubble machines, arcade games and water fountains.
Student Conner Walker and his teams’ concrete canoe felt the effects of a limiting budget. “The tricky part of the budget was determining what tools and materials we would have to give up in order to have enough of the basic supplies.” The team was able to create a total of two molds – learning from their first mold and tweaking their design for the second.
For other teams – borrowed items played a key role in staying within budget. For music maker team Pitch Perfect, comprised of Derek Wetz, Matthew Trn and Sami Stewart, borrowed items played a key role in staying within budget. A local band director leant them a set of keys to use as their main piece.
“Our original idea was to purchase a children’s xylophone with 6 keys, but thanks to the donation, we were able to have 12 keys,” said Trn.
The team crafted their own mallets, used hobby car wheels as the turning mechanisms for the mallets and made a hand crank to move the mallets. With three full cranks, a 10-second song is played by the mallets.
“We looked back at what has worked in the past and how to simplify it to work here,” said Trn. The team placed in the morning session with an honorary mention.
Teamwork also played a major part in making the design day a success, according to first-year engineering student David Barnes. “This project was a great opportunity to work as a team to see a design go from paper to real life. Working together, we were able to create a working pinball machine.”
