When one thinks of engineering, technological feats such as the invention of the aeroplane or the car comes into mind. To students, engineering is simply complex equations mixed with difficult to remember physics theories.
The recent Temasek Polytechnic Engineering Road Show, held in conjunction with TP’s Open House showed that sometimes, the simplest ideas are often the best.
Visitors were greeted to a smorgasbord of inventions created by third-year students for their major project assignments. Ranging from football-crazed robots to gender identification cameras, the road show had enough to satisfy every tech-crazed person within 100 metres.
Featuring the crème de la crème of the projects, many were surprised that none of the candidates for the Tan Kah Kee Award, the top prize awarded for the best project, featured any robots or mind-blowing inventions.
“I was surprised that the candidates for the award were all very simple projects that were very relevant to our daily lives,” Eric Hiah, a third year student commented.
These projects include a door that promotes exercise, a sticker reminding users to flush after use and a sensor that help save water and electricity in the bathroom.
With final year male students having to do their National Physical Fitness Assesment, one of the most daunting stations is the pull-up station. Even doing a single pull-up on the chin bar can be difficult. Four young ladies aim to encourage these students to exercise while at home.
Creating a unique door with a chin-up bar attached, this door will only open does a pre-set number of pull-ups on the bar.
Shuyun, Kalisah, Cordelia and Stephanie hope that their invention will motivate students to practice their pull-ups.
At another booth, a common sink that one could easily find in any washroom greeted visitors. Upon closer inspection by anyone, water would start running out of the tap and the light bulb attached to the same wall.
These would immediately stop when there is no one within a 1 metre radius of the sink after 30 seconds. This would certainly aid in the conservation of water and electricity.
Ironically, the inspiration behind this invention was something most students would face—nagging parents.
Syafiq Azfar, one of the students who worked on this project said,” Basically my friend and I came up with this idea because we wanted to find a way to stop our parents from nagging at us. Whenever we forget to switch of the lights to the toilet for just two minutes, we would get nagged at.”
Indeed, these were just two of a handful of brilliant projects by students from TP.
With gadgets like these, whoever said that students could not come up with brilliant inventions?
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