Engineering FYI, December 2012

This past weekend, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in La Cañada Flintridge, CA, hosted the 15th annual Invention Challenge. Twenty finalists competed by creating a device to launch a roll of toilet paper. The winner was determined by the team whose toilet paper roll left the longest tail.

The creator and organizer of the event is Paul D. MacNeal, (CA D ’79) a mechanical systems engineer at JPL. “We’re seeing ingenuity using the resources available,” said MacNeal. “We want to get (students) off their butts and have them try things and make mistakes, have them learn being creative is pretty fun.” Click here for the article

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Electrical engineer and “weaponeer” of the Hiroshima atomic bombs, Leon D. Smith, WI A ’43, recently passed away at the age of 92. According to his obituary, he lost a coin flip and was not aboard the Enola Gay for the bombing of Hiroshima. He still “played an integral part in assembling the bombs, (and) designed and built the highly complex electronic flight test box units that monitored the bombs inside the planes.”

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The Philadelphia Inquirer is reporting that Swarthmore College has received a $50 million donation from alumnus and philanthropist Eugene Lang. The gift will be used “to upgrade and expand its engineering and science facilities and create spaces where engineering and the liberal arts disciplines can collaborate…” Read the article which also notes that Swarthmore is one of only nice liberal arts schools in the nation with an engineering program.

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