Brian Borden

The SDSU College of Engineering presented the 2002 Engineering Expo Friday at SDSU in Frost Arena.

At the Expo, high school and SDSU students compete in various competitions based on ideas taught in engineering. Students from five states were invited to compete.

According to Isaac Anderson, a junior mechanical engineering major, the college events have money prizes and the high school had trophies and SDSU prizes including shirts, hats and gift cards.

Anderson, who was on the high school committee this year, said he helped judge and participated in Expo.

“This year, I was a judge for the scrambler and I participated in the college event called the baseball frenzy.The machine had to be completely automated and it had to shoot 30 baseballs 250 centimeters at three targets,” he said.

Write It-Do It is a contest where the first two members of a the team build something out of blocks and then they have to describe it by writing about it on a piece of paper. Then the next two people have to go into the room and build the item from the description.

The scrambler is a contest where a team builds a machine that has to throw an egg 25 feet towards a bulls eye target that has different points for each ring. The team has two minutes to throw two eggs and that includes reloading their machine.

Anderson said he was pleased with how this year’s events went.

“I think Expo went very well this year, everything went very smoothly and we had a very good participation,” Anderson said.

Having the annual event is a good way to attract younger students to engineering and give SDSU students first-hand experience, Anderson said.

“I think Expo is a very good idea because it shows high schoolers what you do in the engineering major. And it is a good way for the college students to use the things they learned in class in real problems,” Anderson said.