Two teams tied in first place at the 2015 Techno Brain ‘boating’ competition, which was held at a special 72-square-meter pool erected in the heart of the Technion campus.
Much creative genius was demonstrated by Technion students, and great fun was had by all, at yesterday’s annual “Dr. Bob’s TechnoBrain Competition”, sponsored by Robert J. Shillman, in memory of Neev-ya Durban.
Twelve teams competed in the 2015 Techno Brain competition, held on Wednesday, June 17. The challenge: race elastic-band powered boats. This year’s competition, entitled “Gumpool 2015 Race” was held in the spirit of “green energy.” Competitors were given a complex engineering challenge to tackle: design elastic-band powered boats (built in advance) to travel a distance of eight meters, anchor by means of a magnet, and fire a jet of water into a funnel from a distance of three meters – all this is in the shortest possible time and with smallest number of rubber bands.
“In honor of the 13th annual competition, a special 72-square-meter pool was erected in the heart of the Technion campus. The 13 teams that competed on Wednesday were those that had advanced to the final round, from among the 46 teams that entered the competition,” explained Ben Grotzke who organized the race on behalf of the Technion’s Student Association (ASAT). “The provisions set out in the rules of the competition called for high-level engineering design standards, and I am very proud of the creativity demonstrated by the teams in the planning and execution of their boat models.”
At the end of this unique and truly captivating race, the judges awarded after much deliberation the first place title to two teams, who will each receive a cash prize for NIS 7,500.
The winning teams:
The “Smiley” team, whose members included Marina Minkin from the Faculty of Computer Science, Vasily Vitchevsky from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Michael Pozavski from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, tied for first place. “We used a vane to push the water back, putting to use Newton’s third law of motion that states that when you push against something (in this case the water) it (the water) pushes back on you (the boat) with an equal and opposite force,” explained Fozbski. “In order to reduce aerodynamic drag (created by the friction of flowing water) during the race, we built a mechanism that lowers the squirting pump into the water towards the end.”
Members of the other team tied in first place are Hila Shmuel, Itay Mangel and Aviv Nachmias from the Faculty of Physics, who succeeded in ‘cracking the speed code.’ “The propeller is positioned directly on the rubber band and thereby is spared from friction,” Said Mangel, “and its location on the front of the boat causes the boat to rise slightly, which also lowers the level of friction with the water.” Shmuel, who is pursuing a combined mathematics and physics degree through the Technion’s Excellence Program, said that it was a great experience indeed. “It was an opportunity to use out hands and minds together and to understand the importance of more and more experiments.”
In third place came the team of Yair Garfunkel and his girlfriend Or Oron, both from Misgav (a community of settlements from the Galilee region); he’s studying in the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and she’s a graduate of Wizo (The Neri Bloomfield School of Design), with a degree in visual communications. The pair spent nearly two months working on this project. Oron admitted that, “My degree didn’t make me the lead on design; we planned the entire project together, both in the planning and execution.” They used sewer pipes strapped to the sides of the boat to keep it afloat, a big red (laser cut) plastic propeller, and a white cone. “As a matter of fact, this was also supposed to be able to shoot confetti, but this feature didn’t work…,” she added.
The teams represented an array of demographic profiles and displayed an impressive range of technological skill. A team of graduate students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering sailed their boat using a smartphone, and 82-year-old Ishai Zimerman of Kibbutz Ein Harod and his son-in-law Roni Atzili, who won last year’s competition, entered the race with their boat nicknamed ‘Endurance’ after the legendary sailing vessel that joined the Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914.
The TechnoBrain competition is being held in memory of its conceiver and founder, the late Neev-Ya Durban. Neev-Ya, a student and outstanding Aerospace Engineering graduate of the Technion, was an IDF Air Force officer when he was murdered by a car thief on a quiet street in Tel Aviv on March 8th, 2003.
The competition and the prizes are sponsored by Dr. Robert Shillman (whom everyone knows as Dr. Bob), who participated in graduate courses at the Technion. This year’s judging panel included Prof. Benny Natan, Assoc. Prof. Gil Iosilevskii and Prof. David Durban (Neev-Ya’s father), all from the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion.
At the end of the event, Prof. Durban commented that competition is the essence of engineering, as it teaches students to plan for the unknown.
Photo Credits: Shiatzo Photography Services, The Spokesperson’s Office
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