Engineering

bayarea8

bayarea8

Member
I need some help coming up with some interesting ideas for an engineering project. It has to be something that I build so it can be very open ended but be realistic

+k for helpful ideas

-k for trolls
 
I have about 1-2 months to work on the project with a team of 4 people. The budget is around $1,000 and I am in a high school engineering class
 
you have highschool engg classes...?

is the school actually funding this? damn your highschool sounds intense
 
i've done two projects, im in mech.

in cegep (pre-uni in quebec), i made a blimp. pretty simple to design actually, and with $1k, you can make an epic one.

last year for my thermo class, we made a mini steam car. idea was also pretty simple to design, it all came down to the ratios. heres a pic
526677_10150787007937891_1941007889_n.jpg
 
I designed a heated ski pole for my junior design class. It really simple. A ski pole with nichrome wire wrapped around the inside of the rubber grip. Batteries inside the handle power it. It lets you use some voltage calculations
 
this

$1000 can fund such a nice design.

You could do a bunch of analysis on pressure throughout the system as well as have fun riding it around. You could even work energy transfer equations if you are feeling thermodynamically savvy.

Since you have ~2 months I would definitely suggest analysis on 2 or 3 different designs. i.e. various pressure sources, various skirt designs and various thrust sources.

A hovercraft would make for a great engineering design project and you and your team will be able to make it as simple or in depth as you'd like.

Although, I doubt you have to go that in depth considering you are in high school.. good luck
 
Make a microphone with an amplifier. Quite easy, not necessarily expensive, and it shows knowledge of electromagnetic principles. Not that creative though, but its easy to make both theoretical (just a few calculations of currents and resistances) and practical (the amplifier only needs a few nails, cords, a transistor and a plank).

 
I woul probably make a guitar pickup and test how the number of coils and stuff effects the sound and tone produced. Should be easy with some neodymium magnets and some copper coils.
 
We mad ping pong ball Gatling guns in a high school engineering class... Its alot easier than it sounds once you start looking at designs... ours ended up in the $500 price range
 
Pretty expensive and time consuming. If you have other classes and things to commit to, or you can't work on the project outside of class it would be tough. Very rewarding project nonetheless.
 
Arduino chips are fun and you can find a lot of code other people have written online The set I had to buy for my engineering design class this semester was only about $100 through the university so you still have funds to build whatever you want to be powered by the Arduino. YouTube can show you some cool examples.

This video shows what the class I am in is doing:

3:00 starts talking about programming and the resulting air motor we will machine and run starts around 5:50.

And this is just a cool video of what a guy last year in the class did for an independent project:
 
Build a rail gun. Make a solenoid(I think that's what it's called) with a ton of loops around a tube and then run a current through it. It'll make a magnetic field and then you can hopefully launch magnets
 
That's pretty cool mate. I did eng a uni and all I got to make was a steel A frame for a point load test as well as a concrete cylinder for a compressive test...

With respect to your project, if you wanted something relatively easy you could always do a little electric car.
 
my physics teacher told us his dream is to build a rail gun as a class project. also, he accidentally vaporized a squirrel when he was in college with a hydrogen laser or something
 
obviously build a multistage model rocket with a payload capable of returning to earth. i.e. the top part ejects and has a chute.
 
Design and build a solar panel ground mount for solar farms/home installs. Make it one that is low on cost and materials. Make it possible to be assembled by as few people as possible. Eng teachers eat that kind of shit right up.
 
build one of those snow bike things. itll just invovle attaching a bike fork to a snowblade and somehow converting the rear wheel into a cat track
 
I just finished helping a nuclear physicist and a nuclear chemist build a biomass reactor that turns wood scrap from logging into a highly combustable fuel that had 80% of te BTU output as coal.

Cost a little more than $1000 though
 
Here are some quick and easy projects for you OP:

-Time machine

-Nuclear fusion reactor

-Machine capable of reproducing absolute zero

-100% efficient internal combustion engine

-Your own superconductor
 
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