Junkyard Derby 2011 Videos

Thanks to recent Jacobs School alumnus Wiseley Wu for sending the link to the Junkyard Derby 2011 YouTube playlist.

Be sure to check out the time lapse of the build process (second video...first is the playlist w/ all the videos).

Junkyard Derby Prep

Below is an email that gives an inside look at Junkyard Derby, one of the great Jacobs School of Engineering annual events.

If you've never participated in the Junkyard Derby before, I can assure you that 15 seconds is a VERY long time, especially when other teams get all the best junk you wanted.

Dear Derby Junkies,

If you have done so already, thank you for registering for the 2011 Junkyard Derby. If you haven't done so yet, go do it now! Don't miss the biggest and funnest engineering event of the year. 

As a friendly reminder, all payments and registrations are due May 6th.

Junk Collections:

Do you want a head start at grabbing junk? 2 easy steps:

1. Attend 3 out of the 4 Saturday Junk Collections. The dates for the Junk Collections coming up are April 30th, May 7th, and May 14th, 2PM-5PM in Regents Parking Lot P705. You must help out at the Junk Collection for at least an hour each in order to be counted toward the head start. Make sure you sign in and out for your team.
2. A 15-second head start in grabbing junk, and DECaF points if you sign in for your org.

If you've never participated in the Junkyard Derby before, I can assure you that 15 seconds is a VERY long time, especially when other teams get all the best junk you wanted. 

Also, it is very important for as many teams as possible to attend these junk collections. The junk we collect in the upcoming weekends is all the junk YOU guys will get to use at the Derby. So the more people that go collect junk, the more and "better quality" junk you will get for your cars. 

How to build a Derby car:

Never participated in Junkyard Derby before? Worried about the seemingly insurmountable task of using power tools for some hands-on engineering? TESC has got you covered.

Come to the TESC GBM on May 4th at 7:30 PM in EBU2-584 (room subject to change).

Hope to see you at the Junk Collection tomorrow!

--

Jeff Mounzer on KSDT in 15 minutes

Jacobs School alumnus (current PhD student at Stanford studying electrical engineering) and fabled TESC President Jeff Mounzer just stopped in my office...but just for a moment because he was off to be interviewed on the UCSD campus radio station:
http://scw.ucsd.edu/

Jeff Mounzer is going to be interviewed at 4 PM on Friday June 11 (15 minutes from now). Check it out at: http://scw.ucsd.edu/ and click on listen

Junkyard Derby 2010 Videos Embedded Below

Robot Unicorn Attacks Junkyard Derby 2010


Mad Max wins Junkard Derby 2010


Geisel Library Rolls into Junkyard Derby 2010


Junkyard Derby: Freshman, Super Seniors and a Dragon Belly

Junkyard Derby Videos in the News!

I put four Junkyard Derby 2010 videos on YouTube. The Mad Max video is running on the San Diego Union Tribune science blog Science Quest.

I'll embed all four videos below in a bit, but the links are here:

Mad Max wins Junkard Derby 2010
http://www.youtube.com/jacobsschoolnews#p/u/1/r8XARZs0aOc

Robot Unicorn Attacks Junkyard Derby 2010
http://www.youtube.com/jacobsschoolnews#p/u/0/FzGzVTRoJ34

Geisel Library Rolls into Junkyard DErby 2010
http://www.youtube.com/jacobsschoolnews#p/u/2/yfbOME9MS2s

Junkyard Derby: Freshman, Super Seniors and a Dragon Belly
http://www.youtube.com/jacobsschoolnews#p/u/3/GLhP2R1GCbk

Junkyard Derby 2010

Junkyard Derby 2010..fun as ever! I'm capturing the video now...stay tuned!

Where did the week go? / Junkyard Derby is Friday May 14!!!

How is it already Thursday afternoon?

Well, I was out of the office on Monday and Tuesday for jury duty. I ran into an electrical engineering professor who was also called in for jury duty that day...small world.

Jacobs School undergrads were on TV last night and this morning (San Diego NBC station)...their "mad dash for trash"...which is the exciting start to Junkyard Derby took place on Wednesday night.

NBC also embedded our Junkyard Derby video from 2009...also embedded below.

Junkyard Derby is Next Week! (400th blog post)

Junkyard Derby is a most worthy subject for my 400th post on this blog about all things Jacobs School.

The best way to get a taste of Junkyard Derby is to see it for yourself. You'll have to wait till next Friday, but in the meantime, there are a couple of options.

First option: Watch the video from last year's Junkyard Derby.



Second option: Check out the "Mad Dash for Trash" next Wednesday evening. That's the official beginning of Junkyard Derby. At the sound of the whistle, all the teams rush into a mountain of scavenged junk (abandoned furniture and old bikes are always popular). They grab the raw materials (aka Junk) that they will fashion into lean, mean, racing machines in the following 36 hours.

If I remember right, last year they even had folks out there with welding tools to help the teams transform junk into race cars.

Learn all about Junkyard Derby at the official TESC site:
http://tesc.ucsd.edu/derby/

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/