deltaecho

So this college that I've been shipped off to for this course by my job has this Engineering Challenge competition running. Basically it's a design and build competition run by the engineering department. A lecturer was in the other day to tell us about it and try to get some of us to enter, although there was about as much enthusiasm as you'd find in a morgue.

Anyway, here's the basics of the brief:

Engineering Challenge competition:
Design and build a system to fire a 2ltr cola bottle to complete the following two challenges:
1) Distance: Fire as far as possible.
2) Accuracy: Hit a 1.2m target at 20m.

Any propulsion system is allowed, apart from wet-chemical.


Win! You want to give me extra credit for building a cannon and firing it on campus? I'll take that.
Within a minute I had the whole system worked out in my head, one that would far exceed the requirements and, I'm pretty sure, would win outright (I did some brief calculations, I reckon I could fire that thing, in the system I designed, about a quarter mile if I tuned it right. Given the testing area was only 300ft, I doubt they're expecting that much from the entrants).

But then, the usual happened. The airborne fecal matter impacted the oscillating airfoil when the lecturer explaining it suddenly said;
"Oh, hold on, the testing and assessment for this is on during your exams. Well, you can forget about that then."

Bastards. Not only would that have been great craic, it would have been easy and given me a prestigious award to stick on my CV.