Safety Engineering was possibly one of my favorite assignments despite me being utterly humiliated by my group’s lack of success. We were brought into the classroom under the impression that a small cup full of popcorn was irradiated and were told that we must create an object that would grip the cup and pour it into a bucket from a distance.
My group, Group A, created a grabber out of a cardboard tube, two sticks, and a rope. The rope was threaded through the cardboard tube and the two sticks acted as prongs to lock it in place. It was a genius design that created security and good grip in our demos. Unfortunately, the cup used in the actual test had tape around it which messed with the grip and made the corn spill.
Later we retested it and found that the design did, in fact, function. The only error was one in the conditions of the part. I still think that we should have been warned of this eventuality, but in any case it was a fun experiment.
– Ethan Machado, December 10th, 2025