On May 18-24, the Engineering Design & Development (EDD) students presented their year-long projects to their families and teachers. They spent the majority of the school year conceptualizing, designing, building, and testing the product of their choice, and showcased their creations for their final.

“We formed groups with the people who had similar ideas with [our own], like wanted to work on the same project,” Paige Hagen ‘16 said.  

After splitting up into groups of three, the students proceeded to research and come up with various design solutions. They were then required to construct both a prototype and a mock-up of their actual design. The last step was to give a presentation to their parents and teachers.

“We did a towel heater, because there are towel heaters that are available now, but they are really expensive; the high quality ones are like 400 dollars,” Hagen said. “So we did a survey as to whether people would buy towel heaters if we lower the price, and so we were trying to develop a more energy efficient and cost friendly towel heater design.”

Other students who participated developed their own unique projects as well, based on their interests. For example, Nick Tomsio ‘16 and his group developed a product that combines watches and battery packs.

“My group, we chose watches and battery packs, so we decided to combine the two and create a good looking watch with batteries integrated in it and off of that we basically researched, looked up past patents, and finally started designing it, and then just recently we presented that,” Tomsio said.

Throughout the process, students were able to experience creating a self-led project of their own interests, which allowed them to apply their knowledge from the past years of engineering classes.

“It took us quite a long time to think about a project that needed improving or even like a whole new idea, so I guess going through the whole process would be fun but would just take a long time to think of what we could do,” Tomsio said.