Call It 'The Gadget Class'

April 9, 1999

GAINESVILLE — By the time University of Florida mechanical engineering students get to Professor Ali Seirig’s senior-level class, they’re used to solving theoretical problems.

So Seireg, a professor of mechanical engineering and director of UF’s machine systems design laboratory, assigns a real one: Design and build something — anything — challenging.

The results can be intriguing. Among nearly 20 projects in this semester’s class, students are working on a wheelchair that deploys a small ramp to help it over curbs, a regulator that keeps car tires at the proper pressure at all times and a socket wrench with a socket that spins several revolutions for each turn of the wrench.

“It’s the process that’s important, not necessarily the results, but the results are usually very good,” Seireg says.

Seireg doesn’t give tests or homework in the class, which all mechanical engineering undergraduates must pass to earn a degree. Instead, he tells students to pick any project, as long as it relates to their studies and it’s not something a “garage mechanic could do.”

As in previous years, many students in this spring’s class found ideas in their personal lives or workplaces.

Ocala senior Paul Carter, for example, has a grandmother whose hip injury makes it painful for her to walk outside to check her mail. To make sure she doesn’t make unnecessary trips, he designed a mailbox with sensors that lets her know if she has mail through small red or green indicator lights mounted in her home. The box uses light emitters and photoreceptors, electronic equipment that is not a traditional part of mechanical engineering, so the project taught him a lot, Carter said.

“Electrical engineering is integrating with mechanical engineering more and more every day, so it’s beneficial to have an understanding of what’s going on,” he said.

Nathan Collins, a senior from Cape Coral, asked friends what everyday tasks got on their nerves. Several responded they don’t like to drop what they’re doing to stir food on the stove. So Collins designed a pot that stirs itself. When the pot is placed on a stove, water inside it heats up, spinning a turbine that stirs the contents of a smaller pot inside it.

Collins, who used sheet aluminum, a coffee can and coat hangers to put the device together, said the project taught him that theory goes only so far.

“You learn the difference between the ideal situation and what’s actually out there in the real world,” he said.

Other students’ project range across the engineering landscape. One group of four students is designing a “newspaper-throwing device for delivery vehicles,” as their project description puts it. Student Adam Suydam said working on the project has proved a refreshing change from the less hands-on format of other classes.

“With other engineering classes, they give you these equations and they say, Use these equations to figure out what the answer should be,’” he said. “Dr. Seireg says to go the other way: Take the answer you want and figure out how to get there.’”

Seireg said students aren’t necessarily required to take projects to completion, but they must demonstrate they could be built with enough time and the right materials.

“The important thing is that they do enough physical testing to show feasibility,” he said.