My name is Melanie and I am studying at Mercer University in Macon Georgia to become an engineer. Mercer breaks up freshmen students according to their majors and puts them in a class that is one hour long once a week called University 101. It is designed to help engineers with their workload and getting to know one another (everyone else takes a different course called First Year Experience). We also had a series of three days of orientation activities and learned about where we would be spending the next four years of our lives, possibly longer depending on how much of an education we want to receive at Mercer.
One of our very first activities was a team building activity to drop an egg off the second floor of the engineering building in which we meet and spend most of our time. We only had about a half hour to use the materials we were given in a folder. We were given four sheets of printer paper, four paper clips, four index cards, some string, and were allowed the use of scissors and tape.
Every engineering group created something to try and protect the egg. My group came up with a parachute idea. The box under the chute was fit to the length of the egg. We took an index card and crinkled it up like you would start to make a paper fan. The crinkled paper was to help cushion the egg on impact. We also used a bit of thread in the box in order to put an index card over the crinkled paper. It was supposed to act like a suspension spreading out the impact on the egg by allowing a little bit of give on landing. However we made one mistake by not keeping the egg in the center and letting it roll. which is what tipped it to one side crushing the egg because the box and chute would have had to move down relatively straight while landing. Instead the egg rolled to the right in the box causing the box to tip to the right and the landing on its side.
I will continue to write on my engineering experiences here at Mercer.