YSU ingenuity on display

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Youngstown State University students Clay McCullough, Anthony Onderko and Seth Nycum wowed the judges.

The hydro generator they designed and constructed for their first-year engineering course was selected by a committee from OH WOW! The Roger & Gloria Jones Children’s Center for Science & Technology to become one of the center’s exhibits.

McCullough, of Leetonia; Onderko, of Lordstown; and Nycum, of Warren, formed one of 11 teams of YSU first-year engineering students from whose projects Oh Wow!’s panel selected.

McCullough said they visited the center as part of the project and saw the movable dams already there for children to experiment with.

Water flows through a wheel in their contraption, and the position of the dams determines the speed of the wheel propelled by the water.

Unlike the other OH WOW! exhibits, though, the hydro generator demonstrates what heat power can do. If it’s fast enough, it powers a tiny light bulb that’s part of their invention.

“It can go on the River of Knowledge,” McCullough said of his team’s placement at the center.

Kerry Meyers, director of YSU’s first-year engineering program, said the 11 projects displayed Thursday afternoon before the OH WOW! panel were selected, one from each section, as the best of that section.

Students were allowed $25 per team member and had to adhere to size limitations for their projects. They took their prototypes to Oh Wow! where children got to try them out. Center staff also provided feedback on the projects, and the teams made modifications based on the staff’s counsel and the children’s play.

Angelo LaMarco, OH WOW!’s director of facilities, and board members Fred Alexander, Frank Rulli and Ronald Faniro picked three others that they would like to have displayed at the science and technology center.

One of those projects is the Rube Goldberg device fashioned by Daniel Longo of Niles and Brittany Engel of Columbiana.

It’s a series of pieces designed to complete a simple task, in this case roll a tennis ball into a hole. How that’s accomplished depends on how the users position the different parts.

Longo said that during their OH WOW! visit, children configured the pieces into different positions – some of which the inventors hadn’t considered.

“We had a lot of good reactions,” Longo said.

Engel enjoyed watching the children use their own creativity while learning about science.

The young scientists worked together and cheered when a particular setup achieved the desired goal, she said.

“There was a good team dynamic,” Engel said.