The SMILE Program @ OSU

Welcome middle school students and teachers! Here at SMILE we hope your are excited about this year’s mechanical engineering challenge.  For the last three months the team here at SMILE has been working with a group of mechanical engineering students to create your challenge.  We want you to design a cable car!  Sounds fun right?  To help you complete the project, each week here on the blog our team of mechanical engineering students will be posting videos of their own cable car project along with helpful hints on how to make your own cable car. Next week’s post will give you more details about your cable car challenge, but first we want you to meet your team of mechanical engineer students who will help you through this process.  Keep checking the blog weekly for more updates and videos!

Meet Alex:

Alex is one of our mechanical engineering students who cannot wait to post videos every week! He tells us why mechanical engineering is an awesome field with many career options.  Alex also explains doing research and planning before getting started on your project may help be more successful.  Here are some videos we recommend to get the brain juices flowing:

Meet Jared: 

Jared knows how to crack some jokes, but he is also skillful at decoding some important engineering terms. Who is your customer for your cable car? That is an excellent question! Jared breaks down some of the requirements for the project you will be working on.

Meet Erik: 

Erik loves design and build things with his hands and you can tell by his amazing wood working projects he shows off in his video. Design incorporates research and the customer as well as safety. These will all play important factors in how your final project performs.

A final word from the team:

Your mechanical engineering team is excited to work with you!  They give some great tips on how to work as a team, which will be important when you work with your team on your new project. Listen carefully because they can help your project run more efficiently!