Quick Dips

Curious Contraptions

They lurched, they wobbled, they folded like ungainly deck chairs. Some even exhibited signs of rapid metal fatigue. Others shot towards the sky with such force their bases left the ground. Such were the sights at the 1994 Warman Design and Build Competition.

First professional year engineering students from around Australia and New Zealand took part in this year's contest to construct a device, weighing no more than 4kg and fitting into a 40-cm cube, which could lift a 1kg can as high as possible.

Organisers set a scenario in which irradiated nuclear power workers on another planet needed help from visiting engineering students from Earth to devise a mechanism which could raise a slow-release anti-radiation canister above their heads, an action they could not perform themselves because they were wearing heavy protective clothing.

"We cannot afford to have the canister fall", said one of the workers. "The elevating structure must be stable and light," said another. "How will we release this with one action and cause it to elevate to a maximum height?" queried a third. "And we can't use chemical or electrical energy so close to the reactor because of the safety aspect", added the fourth.

The result? A collection of competing canister-carrying conveyancing contraptions of varying style, stability and sturdiness. Many of the models in the University of Canterbury heats had the look and the action of an automatic telescopic tripod and were set off by the cutting of a string or wire. Once released, the escalating energy unbalanced some of the units and the canisters fell from them. However, the device of Jason Hardman and Simon Craddock won the heats with a combined height of 5.6m from the best two runs out of three.

In the finals, held at Lincoln University, the University of Queensland came first with a combined height of 8.17m. The Auckland University team managed 11th with 3.45m, and Canterbury's contraption reached 2.57m.

University of Canterbury Chronicle