When George Mason University mechanical engineering professor Colin Reagle and his fellow Intro to Engineering instructors first introduced a modified egg drop contest two months ago, he says they got some pretty funny looks from students. But the students quickly warmed to the project.
"Many of them were very secretive about asking questions related to possible solutions," says Reagle. "I think this is evidence that they believed in their ideas and wanted their projects to perform."
This competition, which was held the week before Thanksgiving break, was a twist on the traditional egg drop, in which competitors drop the eggs and their protective covers from heights as high as 100 feet to see if they can withstand the impact. In the egg drop and transport, however, the students designed devices that safely moved their eggs from the top of the Nguyen Building atrium staircase to a stop within 24 inches of the last step with no user input.
The devices had to traverse the staircase (getting bumped along the way), turn left at the landing, proceed down the remaining stairs, and come to a complete stop. The students could not use remote control nor could they place anything on the steps beforehand.
The thinking behind this special ENGR 107 Introduction to Engineering assignment was to provide a team-building and design process-oriented learning experience for new Volgenau School of Engineering students. The competition drew its inspiration from successful autonomous devices—robotic space explorers, unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles—all designed to recognize and overcome challenges on their own while delivering objects safely to their destinations.
"The students learned the engineering design process, namely understanding the requirements, brainstorming the art of the possible, choosing the solution which optimizes cost, schedule, and performance, building a prototype, and performing realistic test and evaluation," says adjunct engineering professor William Diehl, who teaches one of the sections. "They are also learning the human dimension of group dynamics and cooperating with teammates, most of whom they had not met before the start of class.
Diehl says the students rose to the occasion.
"They clearly saw this as much more than just another school assignment. I notice 90 percent of the groups that I observed are continuing to refine their solutions, even after having achieved at least one successful test. In short, I have been impressed."
Reagle says he has been surprised by all of their solutions and even had one group of students seriously consider using a dog. He says the instructors kept a lot of design space open when they wrote up the project because they did not want students to fixate on a potential group of solutions.
"We had to split up the sections so we were not able to proclaim an overall winner," says Reagle. "We had three of our five teams complete the challenge successfully. We had one group that the class chose as their overall favorite."
For their efforts the team of Amana Khokhar, Katia Pierce, Melissa Rossi, and Erika Strano received a bag of VSE goodies. Khokhar said the project taught the students that engineering consists of more than just using science to build models.
"There is a whole process—brainstorming, thinking of possible solutions, evaluating the possible solutions—that goes behind building a model."
A version of this story by Martha Bushong appeared in Mason News on November 26, 2014.