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The Panthers place third in the battle of brains
For the third year, Florida tech engineering students have competed against Northrop Grumman Corp, Bayside High and Harris Corp. as part of National Engineering Week. In the first competition they took home the trophy for a amazing “Rube Goldberg” type of machine. This year’s competition was a Brain Bowl, which pitted contestants against each other to win back the trophy.
Fl. Tech students Jeff Gibson, Valarie Bastien, Ken Mandeville and Christian Torres (picture, left to right) formed the team Panthers. They represented aerospace, mechanical and electrical majors in the College of Engineering. The Brain Bowl was a series of three competitions: A “Pictionary” competiton, a knowledge quiz and a design competition. Although the Panthers placed first in pictionary, they were third overall.
This competition is a great experience and a chance for the students to interact with local industry. It is a fun way to celebrate engineering and for the students to show off their innovative skills. Many thanks to Northrop Grumman for hosting this event.
Adam Cofeild is a senior in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. When he saw the Florida Tech solar car beside the machine shop, he to the initiative to find out what the future plans for this piece of Florida Tech history was. This spurred interest in restoring the car and putting it on display. The Florida Solar Energy Center requested the car as a display piece for a museum they have in work. Adam spent hours of his free time cleaning up the car, repairing the honeycomb by the wheel wells, strengthening the lexan top and applying reflective trim. He did an outstanding job getting the car ready to show on the Sub Plaza at the finish line of the SunDay Challenge an electric car rally, on October 7th sponsored by The Florida Solar Energy Center/Space Coast Clean Cities Coalition.
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Left to right: Dr. Waite, Dr. Ham, Kristie Powell, Margo Thompson (Kristie's mother),
and Dr. Sullivan
Kristie Powell, is a senior majoring in electrical engineering. The $5,000 scholarship from the College of Engineering is through a donation from Northrop Grumman Corporation in Melbourne.
Kristie is vice president of the student chapter of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and is a test technician and intern at MC Assembly Test, Inc. She also teaches computer classes for the National Center for Small Business Information at Florida Tech. Next semester she will be working under Dr. Ham conducting research in the area of infrasound. Kristie is from Nassau, Bahamas.
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Josh Wales has been working on mechanical projects since the FIRST competition in High School. He has been interested in robots and motor driven mechanisms since then. This year he teamed up with Jim Hersperger to build a paint ball tank for the national competition in Tennessee.
Shown in the pictures, the unit will operate on a battery supply under the driver's seat and be able to maneuver the field. Jim is a Florida Tech Alumna who has sponsored this project. Josh is a senior in Mechanical Engineering. He worked for the Nationwide Wheelchair over the summer installing hand controls, power seats, power lifts to make conversion vans wheelchair accessible. As a Senior Design project he is on a multi-discipline team to build an electric car. REV, the Racing Electric Vehicle is slated for collegiate competition in early May. The design has a battery operated rechargeable power system that is designed to take the car from 0 - 60mph in 3.5seconds. For more information on REV visit http://my.fit.edu/rev/
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My name is Megan Kramer, and I am work as a graduate student assistant to the Dean of the College of Engineering, focusing on admissions, enrollment, recruiting and retention. I graduated Magna Cum Laude in May from Florida Tech with my Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. For the past three years, I was captain of the Panthers women’s soccer team. This summer I began my graduate courses in Mechanical Engineering and also worked as a research assistant. I am currently working on master’s degree in mechanical engineering
Some of my tasks include giving tours for the College of Engineering to prospective students and participating in Open House I will be working on several community projects such as high school visits, the Brevard County Science Fair, and E-Week. I will also be teaching two freshmen University Experience courses during the fall semester, the goal of these being to create a supportive environment for freshman engineering students and to inform them of all the opportunities available to help them succeed in college. Back to Top
 Thanks to the generosity of Joao Norona, the Florida Tech Machine Shop has an award for the Work Study of the Year. The primary criteria for receiving this award was that the student be dedicated to training other students to be certified on the machines. This year's winner was Patrick Brewer of the class of 2008. Patrick, a Mechanical Engineering major comes to Florida Tech from Washington State. Patrick was the team lead for the Rube Goldberg machine that competed at Northrup Grumman in the spring during national Engineering week.
Pat is an excellent example to other students. He took an interest in the CNC Milltronics machine, and became a first class programmer/operator. Pat received a DeWalt Heavy Duty 1/2 inch cordless compact drill and driver kit. The award was sponsored by Joao Norona who graduated from Florida Tech in 2003 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. He was hired by DeWalt when he graduated. Because he knows the difficulties faced by students having tools to do student projects, Mr. Norona set-up the Work study award
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 Led by Rachel Gerena, a senior civil engineering student, a team of Florida Tech students and their 2006 concrete canoe placed second at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Southeast Regional Competition’s concrete canoe event. About 700 students representing 23 universities from Florida, Puerto Rico, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee attended the three-day event. The University of Alabama-Huntsville won the Regional Canoe event.
At the competition, held in Gainesville, Fla., Florida Tech, one of the smallest schools to attend, participated in 10 events, including the concrete canoe, steel bridge, balsa structure, and surveying. The canoe and bridge events require thousands of hours of design, construction and finishing work each year. New canoes and bridges are required by the rules that challenge engineering students with problems that cannot be found in the classroom. Mr. Richard Pruss, led the steel bridge team, which built their 22 foot long, 250 pound bridge in 10 minutes.
Twenty-seven Florida Tech civil engineering students participated in events over three days. They took home six awards, including one for a high strength concrete competition and four for the various canoe races. The students who were awarded for the high strength concrete competition, Kolby Maddox, Jeremy Crowe and Joe Morrissey, are sophomores and just completed a course with concrete mix design.
The students designed, built, displayed and raced their 2006 canoe, the 21-foot, 215-pound concrete canoe they affectionately named Sea Esta. The canoe team is judged in four areas: a technical paper, a five-minute presentation, the final product and five races. In the races are men and women paddlers competing in a combination of sprints and distance events.
Dr. Paul Cosentino, professor of civil engineering, the faculty adviser for the ASCE stated that “These students are so passionate about life and learning that they make my job perfect”. The president of the Florida Tech student chapter of the ASCE, Mr. Lennon Shade is responsible for overseeing all events. The ASCE students would like to thank their sponsors, including, Cemex, Vectorworks Marine, Metcon and many others.
The student chapter participates annually in the regional event. The Florida Tech concrete canoe team was the national champion in 1997.
Florida Tech offers bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in civil engineering. Visit the Web site at http://civil.fit.edu
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 Florida Tech had a student team that won a Rube Goldberg contest against two teams of engineers from Northrop Grumman. This year’s challenge was to shred 5 pieces of paper in 20 steps or more. The competing devices use a variety of every day materials to complete the task in inventive and some what wacky ways. The team comprised of Patrick Brewer, Elizabeth Diaz, Jared Doesher, Jason Miner and Jason Schuler spent about 40 hours building their “Little Red Firemen” machine. Pictured are Jason Schuler, Jason Miner, and Jared Doescher receiving the award.
This team won against “Altered Minds”, a 60 step machine powered by compressed gas and a mechanical timed device using rubber bands and model airplane propellers. According to John Casko, Vice-president of engineering at Northrop Grumman, “The objective is to find the most complex way of achieving what should be a simple task. What’s interesting is once your start putting the contraption together, you start seeing the engineering realities.”
It is great to have this relationship with a company like Northrop Grumman to encourage the students in their study of engineering. Next year the competition will be held during E-week in February 2007.
The “Little Red Firemen” machine steps were:
- A Ball rolls down a ramp into a bucket
- The Bucket fall engaging a mechanism
- The 6-Bar mechanism pulling a gun trigger
- The Gun dart knocking down the weigh
- The Weigh hits a teeter-totter
- The Teeter-totter moves a balance
And ...
- The Balance releases a relay switch
- The Switch turns on a fan
- The Fan moves a sail boat
- The Sailboat pushes a switch
- The Switch turns on a motor releasing a mouse trap
- The Mouse Trap activates an airplane on a hang wire
Yes there is more ...
- The Plane knocks over a bucket of salt
- The Salt falls into distilled water to make it conductive
- The Solution completes a circuit turning on a light
- The Light activates a solar panel
- The Solar Panel turns on a motor
- The Motor moves a fireman
- The Fireman hits a tether ball
Whew ...
- The Tether Ball knocks a ball down a ramp, into a funnel and down steps
- The Ball hits the windmill at the bottom of the steps
- The Windmill knocks over a plate
- The plate falls activating a switch
- The Switch activates a motor
- The Motor turns a cam which moves a fireman to push a mouse button
- The Mouse Button activates a print command to a laptop
- The Printer prints 5 pieces of paper
- Which fall into the shredder one sheet at a time.
Very cool engineering for complexity.
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