E-week brings fun to engineering

Being an engineer became much more exciting when Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society, hosted its annual Engineer’s Week. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the event, which has strived to give engineers some well needed relaxation.

This year, E-Week was held from Feb. 20-26, entertaining students at Tech with multiple programs across campus.

“Based on the one event I attended, not many people showed up initially [and that] deterred my experience at first. As the event progressed and attendance grew, it turned out to be an evening well- spent,” said Akhil Modi, a second-year ME major.

“These events are designed to promote teamwork, creativity and fun,” said the E-Week organizers on the E-week website.

The week commenced with the Humpty Dumpty Drop, which encouraged participants, both individuals and teams, to design an innovative apparatus that would protect an egg from breaking when dropped down the entrance stairwells of the Bobby Dodd Stadium. Among the four competitors, the winner was Allan Visochek, a first-year AE major.

“[The competition] was won by Visochek on the tie-breaking basis of weight and creativity. The judges unanimously agreed that his device had the most merit because it did not reach terminal velocity in the test and utilized a protection system unlike anything else seen,” said James Fisher, an E-Week chair and a third-year ISyE major.

E-Week also included a Rubik’s Cube Contest. Among 22 contestants, Chris Tran, a first-year BCHM major, solved the cube with the fastest time of 22.38 seconds, five seconds faster than any other contestant.

The following event was the Build-a-Thon in which the teams were required to bring in 15 cans of food to be able to participate in the event.

These teams were then provided with a set of cans and were asked to make a creative and unique structure using the cans and other allowed items.

“Three teams competed in the event: Tau Beta Pi, Pi Tau Sigma and [the Society of Women Engineers]. Over 400 pounds of canned goods were donated to the Atlanta Community Food Bank. $100 worth of canned goods [was also] donated by Southern Company,” said Ann Trippe, president of Tau Beta Pi and an ECE grad student.

E-Week included a skyscraper contest in which contestants designed and built a skyscraper using marshmallows, skewers, spaghetti noodles and toothpicks, a true test of engineering skills. The participants’ towers ranged from five to seven feet in height.

Nearly all of the towers collapsed at the end of the contest.

Toward the end of E-Week, a dodgeball tournament provided some much needed physical challenge to participating students. Overcoming the onslaught of dodgeballs was the winning team of CHBE grad students Brian Kraftschik, Ryan Lively, Michael Abrahamson, Gregory Cmarik, Alexander Jordan, Matthew Mistilis, Brennen Mueller, Khaldoon Abu-Hakmeh and Prabuddha Bansal.

Finally, E-Week came to a close with comedy night consisting of comedians Michael Kaiser and Marshall Chiles, regulars at the Laughing Skull Lounge located on Peachtree Street.

“It was interesting noticing events all around campus. The mood was pretty festive, which contributed to a happier atmosphere in a week where professors choose to pile on the tests. I feel a lot of them were actually very inclusive. There wasn’t really that much time [though]. After all, it was the week before the week of drop day,” said Akshaya Srivastava, a second-year AE major.

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