DUBOIS – Students in the Freshman Engineering and Design class at Penn State DuBois competed to develop the best designs for environmentally friendly ways to cook and move water this semester. Some teams of students designed and constructed their own solar cooking device, while other teams designed and built water pumps that can run without conventional power.
The winners were recently named at Engineering Day. For the solar cooker, the winning team members were students Kevryn Boser, Andy Skraba and R.J. Fotta. For the water pump, the winning team was Chase Lyle, Miles Ridgeway, Ed Ward, Chris Antonio and Tyler Rushnok.
Not only are the ideas of cooking and moving water without conventional energy sources environmentally friendly, it’s also a necessity in some parts of the world. Assistant Professor of Engineering Craig Stringer said solar cookers are used extensively in South Africa where firewood is scarce, and less than 20% of the nation’s residents are tapped into the electrical grid.
For the students, it allowed classroom learning to be put into practice, bringing textbook lessons to life.
“The students were very excited to showcase their designs to the campus, and team members were very impressed by the questions and ideas other students had about their designs,” Stringer said.
Steve Harmic, Penn State DuBois