No Batteries Required

December 12, 2008. For their first major design project, freshman mechanical engineers at Johns Hopkins recently had to think low-tech. They were assigned to design, build and race model cars that could not use conventional motorsor even a single battery. Each vehicle could be powered only by two mousetraps and six rubber bands. Inside the Computational Science and Engineering Building, 20 student teams put their motley car creations to the test. Many of the vehicles boasted bodies made of wooden slabs and wheels made of DVDs. The self-propelled vehicles had to veer around two obstacles to reach the finish line. Watch this short film about a challenging but fun-filled competition.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Johns Hopkins University
• Mechanical Engineering
• Allison Okamura
• undergraduate
• MechE
• ME
• lab
• freshmen
• freshman
• rubber band
• Mousetrap
• JHU
• Hopkins
• WSE
• design project
• Hopkins Engineering

[gamehunter293]

so how do you biuld it

[edgeman09]

Hey, . . . I only have one request for the engineers. When you design something, . . . please, . . . please make it technician friendly so it's easier to fix when it gets out into the field. Thank you. :-)