Student project packs a punch

EAST PEORIA, Ill. -- Every student, at one time or another, has probably had that secret desire to pelt his professor with an egg.

Recently, 15 groups of Illinois Central College students had those desires satisfied as part of an engineering class requirement.

"The only thing I'll do is keep my head down if it's coming at my face," said Steve Larson, the professor of this year's Introduction to Engineering class.

Each year, Larson gets his students to create a mechanism employing some set of engineering concepts. Last year, he asked his class to create small vehicles powered only by a mousetrap spring. This year, each group of students had to create a trebuchet, a stone-hurling weapon from the Middle Ages. The only restrictions were that the device had to weigh 10 pounds or less, cost no more than $50 to build, and be powered only by gravity -- no springs, slings or other elastic devices.

"When all is said and done, I can make fun of people because I have a better trebuchet than my opponents," said John Mason, part of the team, "Triple JB," winners of the second place award.

Mason was the most vocal supporter as classmates used their trebuchets to fling tennis balls across the ICC gymnasium.

"Yay, 'Folger's Can,"' he yelled. "If they were in our class, I cheer for them, otherwise they get nothing."

Teams created their trebuchets in widely varying designs, from a PVC pipe frame with a complex pulley system to a simple stick with a weight attached to one end. The team names were also creative, including "Tennis Elbow" and "Waste of Time."

"It just came out of my mouth," Matt Covington said when asked how he came up with the name "Phaty Slingers."

Not all of the contestants may have heaved a ball very far, but Larson said he hopes the students used the project to get a better idea of the practical applications of engineering concepts.

"The event gives students a chance to brainstorm as a team," he said. "Almost all of engineering is working in teams. You may go off on your own to do your own work, but you operate as a group to solve a particular problem."

The winners of this year's first place award, with a distance of 23.81 meters, or 78 feet, were the "War Wolves."

"We spent a lot of late nights sitting up thinking of the design," said ICC freshman Jim Thompson.

The group preset the path for the weight that provided the energy for the shot, allowing the trebuchet to maximize its energy output and launch their ball. For their monthlong effort and 50 hours of constructing the mechanism, the group won $125 from the central Illinois chapter of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

And at the end of the competition, the students got back at their teachers by unloading a barrage of eggs at Larson and fellow engineering professor Marty Potts as the two stood in white overalls 30 feet away on the grass outside the gym.

"The only rule is that there are no hard-boiled eggs," Larson joked.