ASME, SEM Win EOH Awards

7/3/2012 By Anna Flanagan

MechSE junior Matt Savoie, a member of ASME, explains how his group built a functional hovercraft from a fan, leaf blower and wooden platform during Engineering Open House. The display took top honors in the Presentation of Society category.Student chapters of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) were honored for their exhibits during Engineering Open House, held March 9 and 10.

Written by By Anna Flanagan

MechSE junior Matt Savoie, a member of ASME, explains how his group built a functional hovercraft from a fan, leaf blower and wooden platform during Engineering Open House. The display took top honors in the Presentation of Society category.
MechSE junior Matt Savoie, a member of ASME, explains how his group built a functional hovercraft from a fan, leaf blower and wooden platform during Engineering Open House. The display took top honors in the Presentation of Society category.
MechSE junior Matt Savoie, a member of ASME, explains how his group built a functional hovercraft from a fan, leaf blower and wooden platform during Engineering Open House. The display took top honors in the Presentation of Society category.
Student chapters of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the Society for Experimental Mechanics (SEM) were honored for their exhibits during Engineering Open House, held March 9 and 10.

ASME took first place in the Presentation of Society category for its Hovercraft display. Students built a functional hovercraft, capable of transporting a human being, from a large fan, leaf blower and wooden platform. Posters accompanying the display explained physics and fluid dynamics principles demonstrated through hovercraft technology. In the same category, ASME's Penny Smasher display, which demonstrated principles related to material properties and metal stamping, took third place honors.

The SEM display called Magnus Effect received third place honors in the Original Undergraduate Research category. The display demonstrated how spinning objects create lift.

MechSE hosted 10 displays in Mechanical Engineering Lab and Talbot Lab during the Open House, including such popular attractions as the concrete cylinder crusher, Formula SAE cars, the Solar Decathlon and a working trebuchet, a medieval French weapon similar to a catapult.


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This story was published July 3, 2012.