Projects

Airborne Wind Power
Type: Power Conversion
The task is to design and build a wind-generating kite. Power from the system will be used to recharge a laptop or mobile phone.

Atmospheric Electric Power
Type: Earth, Sky and Sea
The task is to design and build several rotating machines that are powered by thunderstorms underway around the earth.

Baseball Cannon
Type: Directed Energy
The task is to design and build a transportable compressed-air cannon that will launch a baseball far enough to be a homerun over the center fence at Coors Field (415 feet).

Bench-top Railgun
Type: Directed Energy
The task is to design, build, and test a bench-top-scale electromagnetic railgun.

Copper Vapor Laser
Type: Lasers and Optics
The task is to design, build and test a copper-chloride (CuCl) and/or copper-bromide (CuBr) laser.

Digital X-Ray Photography
Type: Applied Physics
The task is to design and build an x-ray machine capable of imaging low-density inanimate objects.

Electromagnetic Can Crusher
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design and build a device that crushes aluminum soda cans using intense pulsed magnetic fields.

Electromagnetic Disk Launcher
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design, build and test a device that launches scrap aluminum hard-drive platters high in the air using pulsed magnetic fields.

Gas Turbine Engine
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design, build and test a propane-fired turbine jet engine manufactured from an automotive turbocharger.

Grand Challenge - Lieberman's Light Bulb
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
In this Grand Challenge, the Team is to design, build and display a version of Jeff Lieberman’s floating Light Bulb art.

Grand Challenge - Two Person Hovercraft
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to build a pair of single-person racing hovercraft, sell them, and use the money to build an advanced two-person hovercraft.

High Power CO2 Laser
Type: Lasers and Optics
The task is to design, build and test a continuously operating high-power CO2 laser with an output power of 50 watts.

Huge Van de Graaf Generator
Type: Applied Physics
The task is to design, build and test a really big Van de Graaff generator. The voltage goal for the machine is 750,000 volts.

Laser Projection Art
Type: Lasers and Optics
The task is to design and build a single color laser-light projector for indoor shows. The beam from a diode laser is directed through a scanner (x-y galvanometers) that projects a collimated beam spot onto a wall in a fast repeating pattern.

Levitating Magnetic Quadcopter
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design and build a hovering platform that spins four magnetic disks above a copper plate. This quadcopter-like machine floats due to currents induced in the copper that act like electromagnets to repel the spinning disks.

Liquid Fuel Rocket Engine
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design, build, and test a liquid-fueled rocket engine.

Lockwood-Hiller Valveless Pulsejet Engine
Type: Applied Acoustics
The task is to design, build and test a Lockwood-Hiller style valveless pulsejet engine. The engine will be powered by propane and ignited by a timed electric spark. The optimized engine will become the propulsion package on a student-build vehicle (go-kart), as a separate follow-on project.

Magnetic Levitation and Ring Launcher
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design and build an electromagnetic device similar to Elihu Thomson’s Jumping Ring experiment.

Motocross Board - MXB Shocker
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to analyze the performance and specifications of the MXB Shocker Model R and construct a similar device of equal capability. The Motocross Board is a two-wheeled, off-road vehicle that rides similar to a snowboard due to a front-wheel swivel.

Nitrogen-pumped Dye Laser
Type: Lasers and Optics
The task is to design, build and test a table-top nitrogen (N2) laser operating at 120 pps in air with some nitrogen enrichment.

Open-Air Laser Communication
Type: Lasers and Optics
The task is to design and build a line-of-sight laser communication system that will transmit and receive voice and music over a distance of 1000 meters.

Plasma Jets and Living Tissue
Type: Biomechanics
The task is to design, build and experiment with an atmospheric pressure plasma jet (APPJ).

Powered Rope Ascender
Type: Propulsion and Levitation
The task is to design and build your own version of the amazing ATLAS rope ascender capable of hoisting a 250 pound payload at a rate of 10 feet/sec.

Rubens' Tube
Type: Applied Acoustics
The task is to design and build a Rubens’ Tube, similar to the one demonstrated by Heinrich Rubens in 1904.

Singing Tesla Coils
Type: Applied Physics
The task is to design and build a dual-resonant, solid-state Tesla coil capable of producing voice and music from high-voltage discharges in air. Power to the coil is modulated by a half-bridge Class-D amplifier that uses insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs).

Single-bubble Sonoluminencence
Type: Applied Acoustics
The task is to design, build and test two sonoluminescence chambers and demonstrate a glowing bubble in each containing different liquids and gasses

Solar Powered Stirling Engine
Type: Power Conversion
The task is to design and build an alpha-style Stirling engine powered by the sun.

Solar-Powered Water Purifier
Type: Earth, Sky and Sea
The task is to design and build a portable, solar-powered water purifier. Water with known contaminates will be used to determine how quickly and efficiently the system produces potable water.

Supersonic Ping-pong Ball
Type: Directed Energy
The task is to design and build a compressed-air/vacuum cannon that accelerates a Ping-Pong ball to velocities beyond Mach 1.0.

Vortex Cannon
Type: Directed Energy
The task is to design and build a full-scale vortex cannon powered by a stoichiometric mixture of acetylene and air.

Wireless Power
Type: Power Conversion
The task is to design and build a pair of self-resonant coils that transmits power to a 60-watt light bulb over a distance of several meters.