BY JOCELYN WESTWOOD
APEGGA Student Columnist
University of Alberta
Engineering

Each year, the Engineering Students’ Society hosts the University of Alberta Engineering Competition, or UAEC. Engineering students compete in several categories, with the top two teams in each category moving on to the next level of competition, the Western Engineering Competition at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, in January 2011.

The five categories are junior design, senior design, consulting, communication and debate.

Junior and senior design teams must design and build a device that accomplishes a specific task, outlined at the start of the competition. Consulting is slightly different, as competitors are given a longer time period in which to devise a theoretical solution to a real-world problem, and then present their findings.

In the communication category, students must describe a technical problem in simpler terms and explain the impacts of the topic on society. Finally, the debate category encourages students to be quick thinkers, as the team must argue a topic given to them only moments before the competition.

UAEC organizer were APEGGA student members Helen Blyznyuk, UAEC coordinator for the ESS, with assistance from fellow ESS executive Alex Nilson, associate vice-president, events planning. APEGGA student member Peter Roland, ESS vice-president, student services, helped to organize the debate competition.

These folks were kept busy as an astounding 20 teams entered this year’s competition, a significant increase from previous years. Fourteen teams entered the junior design category and three entered the debate category. As consulting, communication, and senior design each put forward one team there was no competition in these categories and those teams will be going to the WEC in Saskatoon.

With so many entrants, the junior design competition proved fierce. The challenge provided to the students seemed simple at the outset, with the main goal to launch a tennis ball as far as possible using a catapult-style device. However, there were several twists making the competition difficult.

Teams had to be able to launch an egg with their catapults, and design a device to catch the eggs without breaking them. Finally, teams had to minimize the costs of their designs, since material budgets were tight.