MSOE to host NFPA Fluid Power Challenge
| Published: 12/08/2008 |
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Eighty middle school students from Wisconsin and Illinois will design and construct fluid power mechanisms during the National Fluid Power Association's (NFPA) Fluid Power Challenge, hosted by Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). The challenge will take place Friday, Dec. 12 from 8:45 a.m. to 3 p.m. in MSOE's Campus Center, 1025 N. Broadway. The competition challenges students to solve an engineering problem using fluid power technology.
Representatives of the media are invited to see 20 teams of four 8th-graders build fluid power mechanisms that they have designed. The mechanisms will pick an object from one platform, rotate and place it on another. In addition to the number of pick-and-place cycles a team's mechanism completes, a review of each team's design approach and teamwork skills will be used to judge the competition's winners.
The NFPA Fluid Power Challenge provides middle school students with information about fluid power technology and hands-on experience building a fluid power mechanism with real world applicability. The program is designed to introduce the students, and their teachers, to the world of engineering and fluid power careers. NFPA hopes to encourage students to select more mathematics and science courses in their high school curricula to keep their options open for technology-based post-secondary studies.
While students are building their fluid power mechanisms, their teachers will learn about fluid power from MSOE professors and staff of MSOE's Fluid Power InstituteTM.
Visit the NFPA website for more information on the Fluid Power Challenge.