Engineering Olympics Ideas

[efoote868]

When I was interviewing, one company had a similar idea going, but with a twist.

There were 4 events you had to compete in, with an overall time limit. There was a paper airplane event, a bridge building event, a tower building event, and a catapult event.

Each team received an hour (substitute with your own time limit) to compete in all the events, and a kit of parts. Whatever your team used in the kit of parts for an event had to be forfeited, you couldn't reuse parts. So if you used all your Popsicle sticks in the bridge, you couldn't use them again in the tower.


From memory, items in the kit of parts were:
-1 yard of tape
-40ish Popsicle sticks
-50ish drinking straws
-1 foot of string
-20ish paper clips
-5 sheets of paper
-10 rubber bands
-1 sheet of card board
-1 poster board
-10 index cards


Goals for each event as follows:
Bridge - Longest span that holds 5lbs wins.
Catapult - Best of 3 ping pong ball shots, furthest shot wins.
Tower - Tallest free standing for 1 minute wins.
Plane - Best of 3 throws, furthest throw wins.

There were other rules for the events, such as the tower had to be fixed (but not taped) to the poster board and couldn't be held. Overall scoring was that teams in each event were ranked, and points for each event were assigned based on rank. Highest overall score won.


I suppose other ideas you could have include an egg drop (highest still intact), parachute (longest time afloat), mouse-trap vehicle (furthest or most accurate), boat (most supported weight).