Mason '23 Reflects on Johns Hopkins Engineering Innovation

Mondays through Fridays we had a three-hour lecture, then a lunch break. After our lunch break, we would return to class and spend three hours doing labs and other group assignments. My favorite part of this was that every day was different. Each afternoon we had different assignments, one of my favorites being creating our own request for proposals (RFPs). This was a group assignment in which we started by looking at a previous individual assignment, which was to code a CPX that would improve daily lives. We then took parts from each design and combined them into one code. The following day we made our RFP and presented it to the class. 

 

Our final project was to build a bridge out of spaghetti that would hold at least three kilograms of weight. We spent the last week of the program finding the ultimate tensile strength and Young's modulus of three different types of spaghetti. With all of this data, we were able to determine how much weight one spaghetti could hold and alter our designs to follow this. We spent time studying different types of truss bridges, seeing which would work best with spaghetti. Once we chose a design we did calculations to ensure we would hold three kilograms. Then, we spent the final two days building the bridge. On the final day, we had a ceremony to see how much weight each group's bridge could hold. 

 

I made a lot of wonderful friends while at Johns Hopkins Engineering Innovation and enjoyed my time studying engineering. I am grateful for this opportunity to grow and study a variety of different engineering fields. When I started the program, I was not sure that I wanted to go into engineering let alone know what type of engineering I would want to do. However, I learned that I love engineering and see myself studying civil engineering in college.