I'm looking for some ideas for an engineering team competition. The objective is to have teams complete various basic engineering challenges, and the team that creates the best solutions overall wins.

Stuff like:

-Fuel Cell car: Calculate the chemical reaction for a fuel cell car (water and oxygen) to efficiently have a car go the farthest and the fastest down a course.

-Mars Rover: Design and build a basic vehicle to traverse the Mars landscape that is wind powered.

-Pipe cleaner tower: Build the highest tower possible out of pipe cleaners. (E101)

What have you people done in the past or have ideas for? We don't want the objectives be all that expensive or involved (no Junkyard Wars) but still want the competitors to need to apply some engineering methods on it.

3/17/2009 8:24:59 PM

egg drop and spaghetti bridge

3/17/2009 8:36:09 PM

Water rockets from soda bottles. Have them design the fins and crap.

Gutter boat race... fill two gutters (side by side) with water and have them design/build small "sail" boats out of wood/styrofoam/whathaveyou. Then have them race them by pushing them along the gutter by blowing into the sails through a straw.

3/17/2009 8:48:54 PM

Give them a stack of 50/100 sheets of paper (some glue if you're feeling generous), whoever can make the tallest stable structure wins.

3/18/2009 8:55:03 AM

^ This. We did something similar with a number of sheets of paper, tape, and were asked to make the strongest bridge we could.

Didn't turn out that well.

3/18/2009 8:58:21 AM

something akin to the pinewood derby? rolling resistance, etc.

3/18/2009 9:26:33 AM

Quote :

"^ This. We did something similar with a number of sheets of paper, tape, and were asked to make the strongest bridge we could. Didn't turn out that well. "

i think my wife had to do something like this in one of her job interviews with a group of people

3/18/2009 9:53:38 AM

All the shit Mr. Haacker made us do in HS.

The "Air Car" - You design a car that can go along a tile or hardwood floor. You launch them down a hallway and see which goes farthest. For your production model, you get one piece of very stiff 8.5x11 paper. All you would have to build is a launcher that won't tear up the cars.

Water bottle rocket

Toothpick bridge - allotted number of toothpicks and glue. have to span 8" or 12" Which ever could hold the most weight wins.

Anything that has to deal with welding.

3/18/2009 10:03:24 AM

Quote :

"Anything that has to deal with welding."

until that one guy that's been welding all his life pwns the rest of the class

3/18/2009 10:05:41 AM

We'll then you need to make sure you're on teh same team as him.

3/18/2009 10:08:07 AM

Quote :

"All the shit Mr. Haacker made us do in HS."

Ah, yeah, now you've hit the jackpot. I remember the 'rolling a car down a ramp', Coke-can car protection system, the balloon-propelled device on a zipline, and the paper bridge.

Now we're cooking...

3/18/2009 12:19:49 PM

mousetrap car

3/18/2009 1:56:55 PM

oh hell yeah, those were fun

we had a long dowel rod w/ a string and some big ass CD wheels

3/18/2009 2:05:12 PM

anything with rockets would be fun.

3/22/2009 6:18:11 PM

Rubber band powered car. Ours had to carry a 2 egg payload in them. Some folks had ones that made it ~10 feet, mine was the longest run. It was a 4 foot long dragster, wooden backbone, 6 inch disk front tires, and 18 inch rear wheels. Made it ~ 75 yards on a hard surface.

3/22/2009 6:42:10 PM