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MCCTC students collaborate in STEM project
By Denise Dick
CANFIELD
The narrative recalls the children’s song “I Know An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.”
But instead of swallowing a series of animals to ultimately catch the fly, the goal of an apparatus built by Mahoning County Career and Technical Center students is to incorporate science, technology, engineering and mathematics principles into an elaborate machine that completes a simple task.
“The car rolls down the ramp. The car hits the bucket. The bucket dumps over and the water goes into the container. The container pulls the mass up and hits the dominoes. The dominoes knock over the books ...,” and on and on.
The contraption totals 30 steps including levers, pulleys, weights, a tire, drone and roller coaster. It’s MCCTC’s engineering, biotechnology and physics programs’ submission in the Goodyear STEM Career Day: Rube Goldberg Challenge.
Rube Goldberg was an engineer known for drawing cartoons of characters who create complicated machines to accomplish basic chores.
In the students’ machine, the end goal is to blow up a Goodyear blimp toy balloon in a minimum of 12 steps. Teams get extra points for additional steps.
The students will learn how their entry scored at the contest April 18 at the University of Akron. The top winner earns a $4,000 school grant.
Students in Walter Baber’s engineering class and Tom Slaven’s biotechnology course designed, built and tested the project.
“It filled the whole lab,” Baber said of the machine.
A video of the contraption in action had to be submitted as part of the contest. After that, they dismantled it.
“We had groups of students and each group came up with eight steps,” Slaven said.
A baby doll, borrowed from the early-childhood program, hangs from the side of the machine.
“They called the machine ‘If Biotechnology and Engineering had a baby,’” Baber said.
Senior Bryan Murberger of Springfield and junior Patrick Byrne of Canfield, engineering students, worked on what’s called a Vex robot. It executed the last series of steps, filling the balloon.
“The contest didn’t allow us to use any fire or explosions because of safety,” Bryan said.
The Goodyear tire incorporated in the design rolls and hits a button, activating the autonomous program on the robot that will “close the claw, hit the handle and then fill the blimp up with air,” Patrick explained.
Bryan said they worked on the project for about a week and a half.
They included a red board announcing, “Engineering Lab 2015,” using LEDs and an element that prevents them from burning out, said junior Alex Schill of Canfield.
Seniors Morgan Hardy of West Branch and Emily Moon of Poland and juniors Gianna Ciccone of Lowellville and Samantha Mansfield, Ashley Westfall and Chase Yaratch, all of Jackson-Milton, are among the biotechnology students who worked on the project.
“The first part was the drone,” Morgan said.
Including some concepts in the design was a requirement, while using others led to extra points.
“We had to use aerodynamics,” Gianna said.
Emily said they tried to incorporate several extra elements to accumulate extra points.
Ashley said a lot of work went into testing the different parts to ensure they operated properly. Even when they worked individually, there sometimes were more trial runs to get them to work once students assembled the entire apparatus, she said.
“It was a lot of trial and error,” Emily said.