Home : Volume 31 : Spring 2005 :
EXPO 2005 draws thousands to campus

The biennial student-organized technology fair featured faculty, staff, student and industry exhibits

Thursday morning, April 14 was clear, warm and sunny; a perfect start to the three-day Engineering EXPO. School outreach coordinator and biomedical engineering sophomore Chris Wegener and his crew had planned for months. Everything was in place. The team felt ready — and then the children came. Wave after wave of kindergarten through fifth-grade students poured down the stairs past the Engineering Centers Building (ECB).

"I didn't expect 1,600 students to come through in 90 minutes but we handled it all right," says Wegener. "It's just something that we have to learn from for tomorrow. It also helps when you're dealing with a little bit older kids. You just have to think on your feet and do as much as you can to make it go smooth."

Wegener's team checked in the teachers and students and sent them on their way to touring dozens of exhibits and participating in competitions where other EXPO organizers would be thinking on their feet — organizers like robotics chair Mark Street.

"FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE." Hundreds of smiling faces call out the countdown. A whistle pierces the air in the Phillips Plastics Discovery Center, declaring the end of another heat. Every half hour, four remote-control robots face off in the ECB's lowest level. Street wears a look of constant concern as he consults with volunteers, resolves technical issues and keeps score.

"The big thing that's become clear right now is that it's not going to go as planned and you need to have many layers of contingency plans," he says. "If something breaks, here's what to do. We're sort of forming those contingency plans as we go, and we see how they work out."

Mechanical Engineering student Derek Christianson demonstrates sublimation of dry ice to students. He also froze grapes with liquid nitrogen and smashed them with a hammer, and explained the fundamental operation of a refrigerator at his EXPO display Fun with Freezin'. (21K JPG)

One floor above, contestants watch video sent from cameras mounted on their robots. They frantically work control toggles to navigate past obstacles, gather as many softballs as possible and return to home base before time expires. Sixteen robots built by middle school, high school and college students are competing for the $1,000 first-place prize.

This is Mark Street's fourth EXPO. In 1999 and '01, he competed in robot events as a student at Madison West High School. In 2003 he volunteered to help run the robot event. This year he is in charge.

"It's always a great event," Street says. "It's fun to see the enthusiasm that people have about engineering. It's something that you lose sight of when you're so close to it and you spend every day working on it, and it's fun to be reminded of how neat your projects really are."

Contestants in the robot challenge designed machines to collect balls and navigate a maze via wireless video and remote control. (15K JPG)

Students with the Madison East High School robot team pose with their creation. (26K JPG)

North of the robots, mechanical engineering senior and EXPO co-chair Mariana Kersh watches another hive of students swarming around The Great Wind Race 2 (see photo). In this competition, students place wheeled-sailing rigs, of their own design, into a long plywood box. A fan on one end of the box blows the carts down the length of the chamber as a volunteer times the run with a stopwatch.

Kersh is making the rounds of the engineering campus, fielding phone calls and helping wherever she can. Two years ago, she and co-chair Jesse Maier started the ball rolling toward EXPO 2005.

"I just thought, 'This is so huge.' I just knew I had to be a part of it," says Kersh. "On a personal level, I wanted the challenge of trying to put a program like this together. I just saw the magnitude of it and it just seemed like such an incredible challenge, so I went for it. It's been an incredible challenge beyond anything I could have imagined."

Kersh and her co-chair Jesse lead a group of 14 people. "It's been a difficult process learning not to have your hands in everything," she says. "I've had to learn how to delegate and how to trust my team members to do what they need to do. I learned I can't do everybody's job or I would drown in it."

On the engineering mall, engineering mechanics and astronautics senior Ryan Curtiss is also looking for trouble spots. With several broad sweeps of his arms he ushers a pack of school kids and speaks in a loud, slow voice. "I need everyone in front of the rocket — for safety. This is going to be really loud."

Every half hour on the hour, Curtiss and fellow members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics fire up their hybrid rocket engine.

"Basically a hybrid rocket engine is a combination of a solid rocket engine and a liquid rocket engine," Curtiss explains. "It has both solid fuel and liquid fuel. In the case of this engine, the solid fuel is an acrylic rod. The liquid fuel is oxygen. When we start this, a glow plug will ignite a bit of propane. High-pressure oxygen will be flown down here through a hole in the fuel rod. At that higher temperature and pressure, the oxygen and acrylic will ignite and burn producing thrust.

"FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE." The crowd shouts the countdown with hands over ears. With a click, a hiss and roar, the rocket fires to life. A clean, orange line of flame jets to the ground. The school kids press harder on their ears, squint their eyes and smile wide.

Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu

Date last modified: Wednesday, 25-May-2005 10:30:05 CDT
Date created: 25-May-2005

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