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Assessment of a Multi-Goal Mechanical Engineering Design/Fabrication Project Used as a Mission-Critical Exercise.

Assessment of a Multi-Goal Mechanical Engineering Design/Fabrication Project Used as a Mission-Critical Exercise.

The project was born out of a need for a demonstration engineering project that could be completed in 8-9 weeks, used straightforward principles and materials, and most of all was likely to draw crowds of local people to our combination Charity event and Engineering Open house late in October. The secondary, or perhaps tertiary, requirement was to enable junior and senior mechanical engineering students to practice developing a ‘mission critical-product package’ in a short time span. At one of the discussion sessions the words October, Pumpkin and Trebuchet landed in the same sentence; our project became “Halloween Pumpkin Flinging for Charity at XXX College School of Engineering. This paper is a report of the outcomes of this attempt to allow a student design group to research, plan, design, fabricate and test a modern version of an ancient device. Preliminary compilation of surveyed data indicates that a design team knowing little about the workings (physics, mechanics, materials, construction techniques) of the ‘flinging’ family of ancient offensive weapons were able to assemble and process enough knowledge in all required areas to enable the development of the higher order skills required to design, test, revise and at the end, to create a functioning design (a la Bloom). The students succeeded mostly in their attempt, as described in later sections.