EGames Composite Parachute

You never know when knowing how to make a composite material will come in handy. One of the Jacobs School teams at EGames 2011 made a tomato-protecting composite-material parachute from blue tape and newspaper.  But this is probably not all that surprising, since there is a structural engineering class focused on composite materials where students make skateboards. (Check out the YouTube video: composite material skateboards.)

Photos of composite material parachutes for tomatoes are below.

EGames is an Engineers Week Highlight

The giant balloon looming over Warren Mall on the UC San Diego campus means just one thing this time of year: EGames.



This year, the wacky engineering competition's crowning event, the "tomato death drop" included water balloons. Students had to build contraptions from everyday objects linke paper plates, tape and newspaper that protected the tomatoes and water balloons and prevented them from getting destroyed when the contraption hit the ground after the fall from the helium balloon high above Warren Mall.

EGames is part of Engineers Week, and is organized by TESC, the Triton Engineering Student Council.

Below are a few photo highlights from the tomato drop. More photos are on the Jacobs School Flickr stream. Also, check out the EGames coverage from NBC.

Engineer's Week is Coming

Jacobs School undergrads are going all out again this year to make National Engineers Week at UC San Diego useful, interesting and fun. And if you're a Jacobs School student, you might even get a job out of the deas (ie: DECaF career fair).

Check out all the Engineers Week events on the TESC site.

National Engineers Week site.

ENSPIRE History

I'm working on a story about ENSPIRE, part of E-Week for the next issue of Pulse, the Jacobs School alumni magazine.

Maria Cardona, one of the 2010 Pulse organizers and a chemical engineering undergrad just sent me a link to a blog that the organizers of ENSPIRE 2008 kept, documenting all the hard work that went into the event.

Check it out...it even has photos of students buying huge volumens of food and drink at Costco to feed the 400 8th graders that they inspired that day. Pretty cool.

E-Week is Next Week. Fun Week is Next Week.

E-Week is lots of fun at the Jacobs School. It's starts off with a Monday holiday (genius beginning!) Here is a post with all of last year's E-Week videos.

Tuesday is E-Games: You get to drop squishy items from a huge helium balloon on Warren Mall. In the past, the students have dropped tomatoes, but this year, they are switching things up...so what exactly students will be trying to protect from the 50-foot drop is a mystery (to me at least).

Wednesday: ENSPIRE 450 8th graders come to campus and get a glimpse of life on campus, and life as an engineering student. It's a fun/exciting/wild day. And the number of Jacobs undergrads who come out to volunteer is incredible...hundreds of volunteers...and you can never have too many volunteers when you've got 450 8th graders on your hands.

Thursday: resume workshop and general prep for the big event the following day.

Friday: DECaF A huge, student-organized career fair just for engineering students from the Jacobs School. It's an impressive event.

All the info is on the TESC website:
http://tesc.ucsd.edu/eweek/