I led a group of five motivated engineers to design, construct, and test a wooden truss. The two main goals for the project were to break at 1500 lbs and have a high strength-to-weight ratio. We had a unique solution to the challenge.

Many other groups in the class thought of a truss and checked to see what they had to do to make it work. I encouraged my group to go above-and-beyond with me to make the best possible truss design.

We wrote a python script that checks every truss configuration within the given constraints for their unique strength-to-weight ratios. After running, the program outputted the optimized truss dimensions. My team used these dimensions to construct the physical model of our design. We tested the truss and had a real-world ratio of 3217. This is just shy of the all-time high in the course.

My professor recognized our ambition and invited us to speak at the 2018 Keystone Summer Retreat for faculty members of the department. We told them about our unique approach to the design challenge and what we learned from going above-and-beyond. The goal of our presentation was to persuade the faculty to encourage this kind of thinking in their classrooms. I believe we were successful.

Before class started one day, a student came up to me and asked if I was the person who wrote the python program last year. He told me that his professor mentioned what my team accomplished. He liked the idea and wanted to do the same thing, so he asked me for advice.