The Waterloo Engineering Competition ran on July 9th and 10th. Very similarly to how it operated in its last two iterations, competitors arrived on Friday night and were given a competition problem upon their arrival. The competitors had the remainder of the evening in which to create a prototype or draft a report to solve the problem at hand.
This term, the Senior Team Design category was given the challenge of building a rescue vehicle for a simulated avalanche scenario. A Styrofoam terrain, with cotton balls to simulate snow, had several magnets scattered around. Competitors built small vehicles with motors controlled by switches to maneuver around the test setup and pick up the magnets, then deposit the magnets back at the start of the course.
Meanwhile, the Junior Team Design participants were busy building a prototype to pick up pieces of candy and bring them up a ramp. At the top of the ramp were a few steps that the prototypes would then have to climb. Unfortunately, during demonstrations, this problem proved too challenging and the best teams were only able to make it partway up the ramp. The competition organizers have taken this into account and will be looking for a more reasonable problem in future versions of the Waterloo Engineering Competition.
Finally, the Consulting Engineering competition division was given a problem relating to the technological advancement of Waterloo. In this category, teams prepare a presentation and report, as if they were a consulting firm, to convince a panel of judges (the clients) that their solution to a problem is the best. This year, the problem asked teams to create a plan to spend three to five million dollars per year over the next three years to dramatically improve the broadband infrastructure in the tri-city region.
Congratulations to Tin To Chan, Naiwen Cui, Howard Pang, and William Zhao for placing first in Junior Team Design. Naman Kumar, Woohyuk (Austin) Lee, Samuel Legge, and Michael Winer took the prize in the Senior Team Design category. Last but not least, the team of Adriana Cameron, Ian Davies, Trevor Jenkins, and William Zochodne lead the way in the Consulting Engineering division. All of these competitors will be representing the University of Waterloo at the provincial level at the Ontario Engineering Competition of 2011. Next year’s competition will be hosted by the University of Western Ontario.
The Waterloo Engineering Competition is slated to run again next term, with specific dates to be announced. More information on the competition can be found at www.wec.uwaterloo.ca.
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