What Kind of Ears Does an Engine Have?

Engineers are special people. I think it is great that they think about things differently. We need all sorts of people. I looked up some engineer jokes and thought this one was quite funny:

Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, "Where did you get such a great bike?" 

The second engineer replied, "Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, "Take what you want."

The first engineer nodded approvingly and said, "Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn't have fit you anyway."

I only bring up engineers because Ivory participated in an Engineering Fair yesterday. Since she is in A.L.L., they are required to do Science Fair in both 5th and 6th grade, but for some reason, their class did an engineering fair instead. You definitely have to go about it a different way. I stopped helping out too much with these projects a while ago, so I watched Ivory struggle and eventually decide on a project.

It was an interesting idea, and she teamed up with Alyssa to work on it. They decided that purses can get too heavy and straps can dig uncomfortably into shoulders. They set about to design a product that would help with shoulder pain caused by a heavy purse. They came up with...

THE PURSE PILLOW

Simply put, it is a small foam square that is velcroed around your strap and sits on your shoulder to cushion the pressure from the said strap. Yes, I know you are all thinking that a person could just take stuff out of their purse if they want it to be lighter, but we are clearly advertising to people that are stubborn or stupid. (I think that includes a high number of the population. In my home as well.)

The girls did a lot of research. They interviewed my chiropractor about shoulder pain and they put together a prototype to be used. They even went to the mall and had people try it and give reviews on their product. It may not be the best product, but it is creative and I can't deny all the work they put into it. And after attending the fair, I was more impressed. I would say that Ivory has a class of kids who are mostly destined to NOT be engineers.

Let's take a look. Here are the girls and their board.

A closer look at their question, problem, and solution.

As I mentioned the girls took their prototype to the mall and let women try it. Here are some of the reviews, ranging from 'it works great' to 'it smells nice' (I'm not sure that woman understood its use.)

I have to give some serious props to Alyssa's mom. Although we were both willing to assist along the way, she got the lion's share. They used a Saturday to go over to her house and sew and she was the one who took them to the Mall. I adore her. She took this cute picture of a mannequin sporting the purse pillow.

Here you can see their design model, the foam they used and the finished product.

They even modeled it themselves. Here is a sad person without the purse pillow.

And a happy person feeling the benefits of added comfort.

I liked their product because there isn't something out there like it as far as I know. Granted there are things like double straps (like on a backpack) to distribute weight that could be just as useful. Many of the other projects were designs of things that are already available, or they were just plain weird. Like the house for a homeless person. It was basically a box with bubble wrap around it. The model was not to scale, but I'm trying to decide how a homeless person would carry it around all the time. It wasn't heavy, but it sure was unwieldy.

There were projects that were more of creative ideas because they couldn't build a prototype.

Jane constructed a dog food dispenser in hopes that her mom will get her a dog. I happen to know that there is a dog in the works. That might be the most successful project ever.

There was some robotics and programming.

Probably the funniest one was the two pencils hot glued together so you could write longer without having to get up to sharpen your pencil. Why not just have two pencils at your desk? Or use a mechanical one?

Ivory and Alyssa came home the next day with glowing news that they had moved on to district. I was really proud of them.

We also went over to visit Dr. Brown and give him gifts to thank him for taking the time to help the girls. Caramel S'mores Bars and movie tickets seemed like the perfect thank you.

Who knows how they will do at the next level. I'm assuming that most of the projects will be science based instead of engineering, but they are happy cousins. At least the girls can rest easy (on their tiny pillow) knowing that they worked hard.