Mechanical engineering tests out projects

By Paige Ricks | March 7, 2008

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Mousetraps, plastic cups, duck tape, marbles, wheels, books and dominos. These were the objects Fresno State’s mechanical engineering 143 class used to build their own Rube Goldberg machines Thursday evening.

A Rube Goldberg machine is an over engineered apparatus that is built to perform a simple task in a very eccentric fashion.

Some simple task examples would be to fold a napkin, screw a lid on ajar or turn on a radio without human intervention.

The students let their marbles go – literally. Many of the students used marbles to push other objects in the apparatus so that it would succeed in its task.

Professor Raul Rai, Ph.D., a first year engineering professor, told his students that their machine must perform its task in 20 steps.

“The students had to draw from different mechanisms I have taught in class,” he said. “It was pretty exciting.”

Each machine had to complete a full cycle in no more than nine minutes, which includes, a first run to complete the task, a complete reset and a second run. Students scrambled after their first runs.

“It looks simple, but it’s a lot of hard work,” Shawn Osier, a junior, said.

For a month Osier and his group worked on their machine.

“We kept it simple and it paid off in the end, “ he said.

Mauro Berdjo, a junior, and his group took four days to just build their apparatus.

“For our machine a switch forces a ball through these various contraptions, which forces water to be poured in this cup,” he said.

Rai explained that this project was important for them to gain hands-on experience.

“I can tell my students really put a lot of work into it,” he said.

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