SUMMER 2015 PROJECTS
NOTE: Classes will operate if a minimum class size is reached. Our intent is to admit students into their highest-ranked course selection. Course popularity and class size constraints will determine final placement.
Contact: summerSTEM@cooper.edu or 212.353.4287
This hands-on course challenges you to assess, design, build, test, and demonstrate an electronics project from scratch. Daily lecture topics include digital logic design, circuit theory, programmable devices, and basic microelectronics. Students will work with diagnostic tools critical in creating a successful device of their own design. Initial designs by the faculty will be used as demonstrations and practice experiments. Student work culminates with an original design they create in small teams. Each student will build several circuits individually, with the final projects performed in groups. Students will develop your skills in project management, prototyping, protocol and functional testing, quality assurance, and device deployment.
An Introduction to Mechanical Engineering: The Rube Goldberg Project
Prof. George Delagrammatikas
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Drawing from Peter Cooperâ€™s legacy of invention, students are immersed in a rigorous, hands-on engineering competition that broadens their understanding of mechanical engineering concepts through application. Lectures and laboratory demonstrations prepare the students to perform their team-based activities, centered on designing and building a "Rube Goldberg" machine in order to learn how basic electromechanical devices operate. Among the fundamental experiments are: DC motors, microcontrollers, internal combustion engines, pumps, structures, vibrations rigs, wind tunnel applications, automotive systems, refrigeration units, and pressure vessels.
Racecar Design through Engineering Experimentation
The FormulaSAE Team
Prof Delagrammatikas, Coordinator
This hands-on laboratory course allows students to explore heat exchangers, pumps, internal combustion engines, a wind tunnel, refrigeration cycles, direct-current motors, and fundamental microcontroller use. Students will have the opportunity to explore design considerations, such as hardware/software selection or system level integration, to help connect theoretical foundations with application. Students will be divided into teams of 3-4 students which rotate through a series of ten experiments that relate to the racecar. They explore the fundamentals of mechanical measurement, report-writing, and graphical presentation of data.
A team-based research project will then be selected by the student teams which will require the students to design, build, and test systems for the Cooper Union Formula SAE racecar. These systems include, but are not limited to: 1) a wireless data acquisition system, 2) a new aerodynamic nosecone, 3) a lightweight crash structure, 4) frame testing system, 5) carbon-fiber suspension members, 6) an improved cooling system, and a 7) turbocharged, single-cylinder engine test stand.
On Monday, October 29, 2012 the New York City tri-state area was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. This hurricane was one of the worst storms to make landfall in the northeastern United States in recent times. The New Jersey coastline was decimated, lower Manhattan was flooded and without power for many days, Staten Island saw catastrophic loss of life and property, as did Coney Island and the Far Rockaways. This section will research and design solutions to the following problem: What financially viable measures can be taken to prevent storm surge damage and how can these solutions be constructed? The students will simulate storm surges by both mathematical modeling and laboratory experiments. Students with particular interest in learning about fluid mechanics are especially encouraged to apply.
Saving the World: The Exploration of Sustainable Energy and Untapped Green Resources
Prof. Robert Dell
Director, Center for Innovation and Applied Technology
Department of Mechanical Engineering
One of the greatest challenges seen by modern society is that of ensuring energy independence. This section allows students to explore and invent novel technologies that would exploit energy sources that have remained underutilized in recent times. Students will be able to identify potential methods of harvesting green energy while becoming familiar with data collection, basic heat transfer and thermodynamics, energy measurement, and infrared thermal imaging. Potential green solutions may include cascade utilization, thermoelectrics, wind, waste heat, solar and organic energy resources; project selection is defined by student interest. One of the exciting projects include the first waste steam heat-powered robot that monitors and controls a heated urban garden. The same technologies have been used by Prof Dell to grow banana plants in Iceland and grass and flowers in December in New York City.
Computational Design and Innovation: The Makerspace
Yosef Skolnick, Facilitator and Project Leader
Victoria Bill, Coordinator, Facilitator and Project Leader
Engineers are natural problem-solvers who tackle problems on a global scale. We address these issues responsibly as we explore civic engagement through our creativity.
This project allows students to solve global grand challenges through a broad exposure to the various departments in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. Students are tasked to define an engineering problem that they want to solve, research the various ways the world has addressed these problems in the past, develop alternative solutions to the problems, and then start prototyping solutions.
Students will have access to rapid prototyping machines (laser-cutter, 3D printers, CNC plasma-cutter, shop tools, etc) to develop a series of solutions to the problems that they find most important in the world. Computer aided engineering tools (such as CAD software, microcontrollers, computer programming languages, and computer science) will be taught throughout the project. Topics will also include patent law, patent searches, intellectual property, entrepreneurship, and innovation.
Genetically Engineered Machines: The iGem Competition
Prof. Oliver Medvedik
Assistant Director, Maurice Kanbar Biomedical Engineering Center
Sandholm Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology
The International Genetically Engineered Machines competition (iGEM) is an intensive synthetic biology competition open to students from universities around the world. Ever since its international launch in 2005, over 200 teams converge onto the MIT campus annually to showcase their engineered biological systems. Since 2012, the organizers of IGEM have added a special high school track for the competition. This section provides a laboratory studio for students to research, design, and build projects in preparation for their entry into future competitions. The types of projects launched by students run the gamut from biomedical applications such as: 1) engineered enzymes for synthetic blood substitutes, 2) living biosensors that can detect pathogens in lakes, 3) novel biomaterials produced using modified organisms, and 4) even using the genetic code of the organisms themselves as means to encrypt high densities of information for long term storage.
Additional Projects and Courses
As in the past, we have accommodated requests for a summer experience that allows high school students to explore their passions in the STEM fields at Cooper Union. If you are interested in a particular type of course or subject area, please contact us so that we can discuss the possibilities. We would have to find at least twelve students to register for the course once an available faculty member is identified. Examples can be introductory courses in engineering design, app development, digital fabrication, mathematics, physics, and chemistry, all taught at the advanced placement or college level, and with a laboratory component in some cases.