Freshman engineering students show off projects
The 15th annual Freshman Engineering Design Day at NC State offered first-year engineering student teams a chance to showcase their design projects and compete for awards.
Sponsored by the College of Engineering and its First Year Engineering Program, the competition featured 375 teams made up of 1,436 first year engineering students exhibiting over two sessions.
Students created arcade games, bubble machines and hovercrafts. They made canoes of concrete that could still float and designed nuclear probes, educational computer games and water fountains. They used everything but the kitchen sink to make Rube Goldberg machines.
The annual event is held in the McKimmon Center on the last day of class before Thanksgiving. These projects are completed as part of the E 101 – Introduction to Engineering and Problem Solving course. The work allows students to put core design concepts into practice during their first semester while learning how to work successfully in a design team.
The competition area was filled to the brim with people. Students were set up in designated areas showcasing their projects, describing how they came up with their designs and how they brought their ideas to life. Parents in attendance were able to see what their students had learned during their first semester and what they could accomplish.
Student Mallory Meissner of a team called RBBM Toy Design that created a learning cube worked with a $40 spending limit, put in place in order to make the team think creatively.
“You see some teams who’ve really put in a lot of time and effort. They really thought about an innovative way to approach the problem and an innovative way to address it,” said Stephen West, a spring 2014 graduate of NC State’s aerospace engineering program and guest judge.
As the concluding portion of a semester’s worth of hard work, these projects helped to reinforce the values of cooperation, hard work and creativity.
“We learned a lot of teamwork and organization and give and take. We have to work together. We got to know when to meet, how to meet, what to do at the meetings so we can be effective and efficient, and just working together was a big thing,” said student Zachary Hancock.
Hancock’s team, Nuclear Meltdown, was declared one of the winners of the nuclear probe competition in the morning session.
“I think it was just a really great opportunity for the kids to be able to actually experience a nuclear reactor, get to test with it, and expand their knowledge around that. I think it’s just great that NC State offers this type of event to allow the kids to put their skills and their knowledge to work,” said Zachary’s father, Jeff Hancock.
