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Team gets a charge out of new sled
Ethan Brodsky sometimes loses sleep at night. It’s not because he’s worried or drank too much coffee before bed. Rather, he has trouble stepping away from an exciting challenge. And it’s his addiction to the rush of innovation that keeps him going back to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s competition vehicles team. “As a student, you skip class,” he said. “You skip sleep. You get very involved in it.” He graduated from UW-Madison and now works as an assistant scientist in the School of Medicine and Public Health. But he’s still got the itch for automotive innovation. This year, as team co-advisor for the 12 students designing and building a zero-tailpipe-emission snowmobile, the challenge is greater than ever. The Society of Automotive Engineers, through the Clean Snowmobile Challenge, has pressed engineering students to build sleds researchers can use in arctic climates to get to pristine ice fields and collect ice samples. Today, they traverse to the sites on foot or ski. “Captured in the ice is the carbon content that was in the air the year the snow fell and the ice formed,” said Glenn Bower, the team’s co-advisor. “Gas from the sled, even just the amount that is released into the air and falls back to the ground, contaminates those samples.” Working with a variety of sponsors, the team is designing an electric snowmobile Bower predicts will cruise at 25 mph for 25 miles to 30 miles before needing a recharge. The team plans to equip the sled for rapid recharge, getting its fix of power in less than an hour. In March, the sled and its makers will head to Houghton, Mich., to compete against about six other snowmobiles. If any of the designs impress the scientists at the National Science Foundation, it is possible the winning sled will be taken to Summit Station in Greenland and tested in an arctic climate. And although it’s a long shot, if the sled performs well there, the NSF could commission a handful of sleds for use in actual research, Bower said. — Jennifer Pfaff Craig takes the Greenheck reins
Engineering education has lost its way. At least that’s how Kevin Craig sees it. The 56-year-old mechatronics expert recently was named to the newly formed Greenheck Chair in Engineering Design at Marquette University. “What’s happening is memorization,” he said of colleges throughout the nation. “There’s a difference from studying a field and becoming an engineer.” Craig is a former professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., and has served as a consultant to Proctor & Gamble, Xerox and other companies. His new position will let him help Dean Stan Jaskolski form a new curriculum based on hands-on discovery of the scientific and mathematic concepts that allow for innovative design. The goal is to produce graduates who aren’t limited to quoting theory from textbooks and who can design real products that customers want to buy. The key will be integrating multiple engineering disciplines into the design process from the start. That’s a main principle in mechatronics and the trend in today’s workplaces, so Craig plans to require a multidisciplinary approach in all classes. “It’s rare,” he said, “anything designed today doesn’t have all these elements.” — Jennifer Pfaff
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