Fun with mechanical engineering: Sask. Polytech students get hands-on learning by building hovercraft | 24CA News
A handful of scholars levitated across the Saskatchewan Polytechnic gymnasium in Saskatoon earlier this week, lifted by the air energy created by cordless leaf blowers.
The post-secondary college’s first-year mechanical engineering technologists spent a couple of month constructing hovercraft, with the aim of testing their velocity and stability underneath completely different design parameters and taking an investigative strategy to creating and setting up.
“We were kind of skeptical about how it would work,” stated pupil Carter Pierce, a number of moments earlier than sitting on the plywood and polystyrene foam composite body of 1 hovercraft.
“We weren’t sure and we messed around with how much holes were on the inside and stuff like that,” stated Pierce.
“I didn’t even know how hovercrafts worked before this.”
According to class teacher and program head Kurt Soucy, the leaf blower inflates a bonnet of polyethylene plastic sheeting after which blows out beneath it to create an air cushion. That lets the hovercraft glide throughout the bottom with minimal friction.
Four teams of scholars, with 4 to 6 college students in every group, have been tasked with procuring the supplies and constructing the models, which had slight variations from one another however have been all within the roughly one-metre-wide vary.
“We recognize this is an opportunity in a first-year class to allow the students to work in a team environment and a creative role,” stated Soucy.
As nicely, “I just think it’s fun,” he stated.
On Monday, the scholars stacked a number of metallic plates weighing about 20 kilograms (45 kilos) every onto their craft earlier than sending them floating down a picket ramp for a velocity check.
WATCH| Saskatchewan Polytechnic college students create selfmade hovercraft:
A leaf blower, some plywood and a bit of froth and plastic wrap are the primary elements a handful of first-year Saskatchewan Polytechnic mechanical engineering tech college students used to construct a hovercraft not too long ago in Saskatoon.
A handful of second-year college students stood on the sideline, clapping and whooping when one hovercraft barrelled down the ramp, previous timing gates with ultrasonic movement detectors and into the arms of scholars on the opposite fringe of the gymnasium.
The program is at all times searching for methods to provide college students a hands-on expertise, sais Soucy.
“It’s that prepping them for what a potential role as a technologist could have them do.”
Building a hovercraft and dealing hands-on cuts via the dryness of the standard college curriculum, stated Matthew Berube, one other first-year pupil who examined out his group’s hovercraft.
“We had our first semester — you get a bunch of new equations and formulas pushed at you, so this was a fun way for us to put what we’re learning in the classroom to use,” he stated.
This 12 months was the primary the hovercraft undertaking was assigned to college students, however Soucy stated he plans to maintain it in some kind into the longer term.
