Leave two engineers alone with a large brush, two bottles of water, a sensor and a pile of wood and the results may be impressive.
Engineering seniors Elyse Newman and Francesca Lattanzio developed a "smart trash can" that automatically sorts recyclables that people place on a track.
Painted green and white, "Trash-E," as the girls named it, separates general trash, glass bottles, aluminum cans and plastic bottles.
Inspired by newly developed solar-powered trash compactors in Boston, the two seniors aimed to promote environmental causes through their project.
By sorting recyclables by material, trash can be stacked more efficiently to minimize carbon footprints, Newman said.
The girls created the trash can for their senior design project, which all senior engineering students must complete in order to graduate.
Nineteen groups within the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics major presented their projects on Jan. 18. Other majors will present design projects in the upcoming months.
Other innovative projects included a guitar-playing robot, a water purification system for villages, a GPS-guided parachute system and a sandwich machine.
"There is no shortage of creativity in our senior projects," said Robert Jeffcoat, the professor for the course. "The ideas are mostly very good, some brilliant."
Although they encountered many difficulties throughout the course of the project from budget to construction, the seniors said it was still a rewarding experience.
"It was frustrating, but I never had such high expectations [for myself]," Lattanzio said.
Both agreed it enabled them to see that they could build practical devices.
"We bit off exactly what we knew we could chew," reflected Newman.
Lattanzio and Newman earned The William K. Gemmill Memorial Award for outstanding creativity, one of the four awards given out to the groups.
"Every single girl [in the Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics major] was on a team that won an award," said Newman. She added this was the first time that had ever happened.
Jay Olman, part of the group that created the sandwich machine, said "everyone seemed motivated to attempt something that couldn't be done overnight."
The Engineering-wide senior design competition, in which select projects from the MEAM department will compete, will be held on May 2.
