The Engineering Design Competition began in 1998, and served as our outreach for elementary school students. The final competition was held during National Engineer's Week. Check out some photographs from our 1998 Can Crusher Competition finals at the Providence Science Museum.
This competition was developed as a result of our teaching physics to elementary and middle school teachers in our Newton's Gig course using the A World In Motion kit developed by the Society of Automotive Engineers. The kit involves three different areas which use Newton's laws of motion and contains small experiments demonstrating these laws which lead up to a major project. The can crusher is one of these projects and was used as our design competition topic. A land skimmer was the project used for the 1999 competition. (Since SWE-NESS is largely based in Rhode Island, the Ocean State, we thought this project would be very appropriate!)
Students in 3rd through 6th grades from the schools were eligible to participate in the Can Crusher Design Competition. Flyers and letters were sent to these schools in late August 1997 so they could include the scientific principles needed for the project in their curriculum. Because the entry deadline was mid-January of 1998, follow-up letters with entry forms, response forms, and judging criteria were sent to the schools in November, so they could complete the response form and send it or phone it in by December.
We received fourteen written design entries, which we reviewed and judged in a pre-competition meeting in order to determine the top two finalists for each grade. These finalists were then invited to bring their can crusher models to the Providence Children's Museum on February 22, 1998, where the final judging would take place. The students were asked to give an oral presentation, including the names of their team members and their responsibilities, then demonstrate their crusher to the SWE-NESS judges. Out of four schools we had seven finalists, but unfortunately only three finalists were present at the final competition due to school vacation. Since each finalist team was from a different grade, they all received the first place award for their grade. The awards included the I Want to Be an Engineer book, a National Engineer's Week Certificate and a National Engineer's Week bookmark. Each team member of the top two finalist teams for each grade was given a certificate and bookmark. All other entry participants were given bookmarks as well.
The can crusher models were then opened for viewing by the public for the rest of the afternoon, and students demonstrated how their can crushers worked upon request. The museum staff expressed their enthusiasm for the competition being held there, and the participants were excited to show off their hard work. As a result of the positive feedback from the staff, we had planned to hold the 1999 Land Skimmer Design Competition finals at the museum, however, there was only one school who responded to this competition, so the school and its teams were presented awards for participation at the school. Due to the poor response, we solicited all the schools and discovered this topic was too difficult for the age levels we were targeting. So we went back to having a Can Crusher Competition in 2000..
Another positive result of the hard work for this project is that SWE-NESS was awarded $1000 from the SWE Board of Directors' Fund to document and publicize the Design Competition for use by other SWE sections. This was made available in 2000 for sections to use as a guide for their own competitions, and is in the form of a manual with accompanying video.
A copy of the manual and video was sent to each Region Director, as well as the SWE National CG Chair.
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