A commuter cup for cyclists, a remote keyless bike lock and a rock climbing system for hoisting heavy equipment are among the innovative new products designed by CU-Boulder engineering students that will be demonstrated at the Integrated Teaching and Learning Program's Fall Design Expo.
More than 60 student projects, ranging from new products to assistive technology devices designed for individual clients, to Rube Goldberg contraptions, will be showcased at the event.
Projects will be open for public viewing and demonstration from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 4. An awards ceremony will be held at 3 p.m.
The Expo is free and open to the public, and will be held in the College of Engineering and Applied Science's award-winning Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, located on Regent Drive about one block south of Colorado Avenue.
Free parking is available on Saturdays in the Regent Drive Autopark, Lot 436, across the street from the ITL Laboratory.
The projects being demonstrated represent the work of more than 300 undergraduate engineering students, including about 25 who wrote business plans to take their inventions to the marketplace. Students in the college's Innovation and Invention class not only designed and built their devices, but also looked at marketability and manufacturing costs and wrote mini-business plans for selling their inventions.
Many students in the college's first-year Engineering Projects course have designed devices to meet the needs of specific clients with disabilities. For example, students have redesigned a bicycle for a boy who has cerebral palsy, a joystick grip for another disabled child's wheelchair and two skiing devices for the National Sports Center for the Disabled at Winter Park.
Several groups of students also have created zany "Rube Goldberg" contraptions, which go through a number of consecutive steps to perform a simple task.
This year's Expo is sponsored by Dell Computer Corp., which will participate in judging the projects along with other volunteers from industry, government and the community.