July 2014

NSPE TODAY
Engineers at Play in Minnesota

“What do engineers and barbarians have in common?” asked a video from the Minnesota Society of Professional Engineers.

The answer: catapults.

Rescheduled from Engineers Week due to winter storms, MSPE held its first Engineers at Play! event on May 20 in conjunction with its annual meeting. Engineers could pay $45 and spend more than two hours in a local museum, building and launching catapults, eating dinner, and socializing over drinks.

Hosted at The Works Museum in Bloomington, attendees built catapults as teams of two or three to compete in two events: distance and accuracy. In the distance event, the longer the launch, the more points a team earned. In the accuracy event, teams earned points for knocking down plastic cups. Teams got three shots in each event and their points were totaled up at the end.

In addition to building catapults, attending engineers could explore the other exhibits at the museum, including putting greens, a K’Nex ball machine, and model wind turbines. The Works Museum, “where kids explore how things work,” is an interactive museum to engage kids in science, technology, and engineering in order to make learning fun.

NSPE member Alison Skelly, P.E., wrote in after the event: “I just wanted to say thanks for the awesome event on Tuesday! The food was delicious, The Works Museum activities were neat, and it was so much fun to build catapults with other engineers!” She concluded, “I definitely want to come next year.”

Also present was NSPE Executive Director Mark Golden, who had attended the MSPE annual meeting. Reflecting on the catapult contest, Golden said, “the atmosphere of teamwork that immediately took hold in each group was a joy to behold, and aside from the engineering techniques involved, it emphasized that engineering is more than the technical problem: it is about solving a real problem and accomplishing a specific outcome.”

The idea for the event came about as the Minnesota Society was brainstorming ways to do something different for EWeek after nearly 50 years of banquets and award ceremonies. Mary Detloff, executive director for MSPE, saw an opportunity to merge this with outreach activities at The Works Museum, and so “Engineers at Play!” was born. Approximately 80 engineers attended the competition, and Detloff hopes to have even more at the event next year.

Visit www.mnspe.org to watch the video and learn more about the event.

MINNESOTA SOCIETY OF PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERS MEMBERS BUILT CATAPULTS, PLAYED WITH MUSEUM EXHIBITS, AND SOCIALIZED AT A NEW EWEEK EVENT THIS YEAR.
PHOTO CREDIT: TIM DAVIS, WWW.CONPHOTO.NET