Photo By Richter Goodfriend | Jon Cox, an Arnold Engineering Development Complex engineer, demonstrates operation of...... read more read more
The theme for this year’s Engineers Week was “Dream Big!”
Many high school and middle school students took part in local events designed to help them dream big.
The first event, MATHCOUNTS® competition, took place Jan. 28 on the University of Tennessee Space Institute campus.
Middle school students from Highland Rim Elementary in Lincoln County, the Webb School in Bedford County, East and West Middle Schools from Tullahoma, and St. Andrews-Sewanee in Franklin County participated in the event which consisted of 3 rounds – a sprint round, a target round and a team round.
In the sprint round, the contestants had to answer 30 problems in 40 minutes on an individual basis without calculators. For the target round there were eight problems given in sets of two with six minutes to do each set. They could use calculators in the target round. The team round had 10 problems, and collaboration of the four-member team was allowed.
Third place went to Highland Rim Elementary, second place to East Middle School and the first place team was from The Webb School.
The competition was sponsored by the Tullahoma chapter of the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers as a local competition. The winning team and four high-scoring individuals will compete as the Tullahoma team at the state competition in Nashville March 18 at the Tennessee Engineering Center.
The Tullahoma team will include The Webb School team members Nicky Dai, Barrett Melson, Nathan Xing and Zia Wang; Franklin Zhang, Kyler Parker and Jake Bennett of East Middle School; and Preston McGee of West Middle School. Sam Robinson from Highland Rim Elementary will be an alternate.
Fifty students from Cascade High School, Coffee County Central High School, Community High School, Franklin County High School, Huntland High School, Lincoln County High School, Shelbyville Central High School, St. Andrews-Sewanee School and The Webb School competed in the 22nd Tullahoma Area Student Design Competition Feb. 22 at UTSI.
This year’s project was to design, build, market and compete a wind-powered craft to transport a payload of golf balls, or kyber crystals, across a body of water. A Star Wars-based theme was used as the backstory for the project.
The students were to help the Rebels in their fight against the First Order by transporting kyber crystals across the Kardashian Sea west to the port of Kanye. An inflatable wading pool represented the sea, and a box fan provided the wind power. The students had two hours to design and build their device from a kit of supplies ranging from paper clips to egg cartons. Once they built a device, they were encouraged to test it before the competition. The students had a blast, and each team came up with a unique solution. A scoring equation which accounted for payload, time and presentation was used to determine the winners.
Third place went to Sarah Clarneau and Joe West of Coffee County Central High School, and they each received a $50 Amazon gift card. The second place team was Trey Levy and Austin Mills of Community High School, they received $75 Amazon gift cards. First place went to Kyra Wilson and Ester Yang from St. Andrews-Sewanee School. They received $100 Amazon gift cards, a first place trophy and they will have their names engraved on the Spirit of St. Louis model that is on display at the Hands on Science Center in Tullahoma.
The Engineer for a Day event took place Feb. 22 at AEDC. Thirty-eight students from Cascade High School, Community High School, Coffee County Central High School, Franklin County High School, Lincoln County High School, Moore County High School, Oakland High School, St. Andrews-Sewanee School, Warren County High School and The Webb School participated in the event.
The students were welcomed by the AEDC commander, Col. Rodney Todaro, and watched a film presentation about AEDC. A question and answer period followed during which they could ask questions about engineering college curriculum and engineering as a career. They toured AEDC facilities including a sea-level test cell and a space environment chamber.
After lunch, students were paired with engineering mentors and spent the afternoon learning about the work engineers do on a daily basis. Many of the students have already been accepted at colleges for the fall semester and spending time with the engineer mentors may help them decide on areas of study. Feedback from the students was very positive.
Engineers Week was capped off by the Engineers Banquet Feb. 23 at the UTSI cafeteria. Jere Matty, AEDC Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics coordinator and emcee for the evening, helped review the Engineers Week activities, and Dr. Ryan Bond, research professor at UTSI, introduced the guest speaker, Dr. Chris Cotting, the Flight Sciences Technical Expert for the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School.
Dr. Cotting described the Test Pilot School as the place where pilots and flight engineers work hard and achieve a Master’s degree in flight test in a year’s time. They fly in more than 20 different aircraft and spend over 100 hours in flight. During their year at the Test Pilot School, they don’t take any breaks and are not allowed to go on leave due to the intense nature of the curriculum.
In the classroom, he instructs his students to predict, test and validate. Students need to know their flight vehicle well enough to predict how it will respond in flight, test the vehicle and validate their prediction. This predict, test, validate method is used every day at AEDC in the many test projects that occur there.
He also tells his students to soak up as much as you can from the “old guys” because they have learned many lessons through experience. When he worked for Lockheed Martin, Cotting said he would buy lunch for the “old guys” and learn the ins and outs of the vehicles like the SR-71 Blackbird.
He also exhorts his students to “think about thinking.”
Most of us don’t really know or appreciate how much we don’t know about a particular subject, and not being able to be honestly critical about the way we think may affect our interpretation of data and conclusions we draw, which could have a negative impact on a test in a wind tunnel or a test in a flight vehicle.
Dr. Cotting left all who attended with an appreciation of the flight test school and for critical thinking, which is something we can all improve on.
His talk may have inspired some of the young members of the audience to “Dream Big” and maybe one day become test pilots.
| Date Taken: | 02.24.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 03.15.2017 10:23 |
| Story ID: | 226900 |
| Location: | ARNOLD AFB, TENNESSEE, US |
| Web Views: | 34 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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