Get Set … Go! Matchbox Races!

Reported June 2008

BETHLEHEM, Pa. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Think engineering is child's play? Well, for a few months every year in Bethlehem, Pa., it is. Lehigh University mechanical engineering majors and Tyco electronics team up to give middle school students an inside look at the science behind the industry.

"On your marks. Get set. And they're off, Ladies and Gentlemen!" This is no ordinary day at the races. These cars may hit the finish line in a flash, but each one represents months of planning and preparation by 13-year-old budding engineers.

"My favorite part would probably be designing the car and seeing it come to life through injection molding and a rapid prototype," Paul Hess, a Broughal Middle School student in Bethlehem, Pa. told Ivanhoe. Some tricky terms you wouldn't expect to hear from eighth-graders, but that's exactly the point.

Lehigh University mechanical engineering students are "steering" more than 60 middle school students through the manufacturing expo. College students lead dozens of teams through all the steps of building a matchbox car, starting with computer-aided design. "It's a chain chomp and it's modeled after the Mario games. One of his enemies is a chain chomp," student Alex Knowles says about the car he helped design.

Next, wax molds are cut. Then, aluminum molds are made to form the final product. Plastic pellets are melted and injected into the mold to create the car shapes. The students want something that looks great and moves fast. "Aerodynamics is the main thing; how the front of our car is a lot heavier than the rest," student Evan Wescoe says.

Not every design races well, but in the end the students "win" some valuable insight. "We expose the middle school students to this so they understand really what an engineer does and what he has to do in order to be successful," Chuck Smith, Ph.D., a mechanical engineering professor at Lehigh University, told Ivanhoe. And it may put the teens on a career track they hadn't considered before.

The manufacturing expo has become an annual event. The project is also a requirement for mechanical engineers students at Lehigh University taking classes in manufacturing.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Kurt Pfitzer
Office of University Relations
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA 18015-3754
(610) 758-3017
Kap4@lehigh.edu

The time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body’s fat burning in park! The science of how sitting can lead to diabetes, heart disease and obesity.

More than a quarter of all toddlers in the United States may be under-vaccinated, but a new tool is helping parents keep their kids' vaccines on track.

Revolutionary science is helping to give people healthier smiles.

A new device could clean blood of deadly viruses and may help the 14,000 people infected with HIV every day.

Millions of people in the United States live every day with the threat of a volcano close by, but a new website could help warn them both if disaster strikes.

Accurate, timely forecasts are vital to everyday life, but just how critical may surprise you!

New, computerized weather maps are helping emergency responders save lives when disasters strike!

Each year, 7,400 people are killed and over 670,000 people are injured in crashes. But not all wrecks are because of driver error.

The latest generation of CT scanners is here, capturing pictures of whole organs in seconds!

Not only do patients need rest after heart surgery, so do their hearts! How a new device is helping weak hearts heal.

Maintaining a saltwater aquarium can be an expensive hobby, but a group of young engineers have created a revolutionary pump for saltwater aquariums that may help some species thrive in captivity.

An annual event has middle school students racing to the finish line and is teaching them some engineering skills at the same time.