Our Rube Goldberg team, which recently won first place in their regional competition, won second place in the Rube Goldberg National Competition on Saturday.

Mike Mierzwa, Theta Tau’s national contest chairman and a Purdue senior in nuclear engineering from Morris Plains, N.J., said this year’s competition was extremely close. St. Olaf edged out the No. 2 team from the University of Illinois. The Illinois team had won the Purdue regional competition in February with its “Scene of the Crime” machine based on the board game Clue.

Congrats to our Rube Goldberg team!

Full Story: First-time entrant captures Rube Goldberg national title

Update: Here is a video of the winning machine:

Engineering Open House, the huge celebration of engineering on the campus of the University of Illinois College of Engineering, is happening this Friday, March 13 and Saturday, March 14.

There are over 200 exhibits featuring student projects, four design contests, and a performance by Grant Imahara from the Mythbusters (get your free tickets on the Engineering Quad on Friday).

Don’t miss it!

Tonight at 8:30pm, the Big Ten Network will premiere a new reality series. The show follows a group of six UI students participating through the “Engineers without Borders” organization in the village of Adu Achi, Nigeria during the summer of 2008. The group worked on a project to bring safe drinking water to the village in Nigeria. The project is ongoing and involves designing a new water system.

Students and villagers worked side by side building cement water holding tanks, digging trenches and laying pipe for the new water system. Although team members returned to Illinois at the end of the summer, the village continues to work on the project with input from the students. The goal is for the water system to be operational in the spring of 2009.

In the documentary, the students reflect on the warm welcome they received in the village and the long hours of labor at the work site. They faced ongoing struggles to get supplies in a country with little infrastructure. Faculty Advisor Bruce Litchfield says the trip “was an outstanding opportunity to field test the student’s classroom knowledge of engineering and to help people in need.” Several students said it the trip was the fulfillment of a long time goal to work in a developing country.

The show is called It’s More than a Well and has been co-produced by the Big Ten Network, the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics and the University of Illinois Office of Public Affairs.

Check it out!

It’s More Than a Well debuts Thursday on BTN

Researchers in the College of Engineering have recently published a paper outlining a self-healing coasting they have invented.

To make self-repairing coatings, the researchers first encapsulate a catalyst into spheres less than 100 microns in diameter (a micron is 1 millionth of a meter). They also encapsulate a healing agent into similarly sized microcapsules. The microcapsules are then dispersed within the desired coating material and applied to the substrate.

So when the surface of the coating is scratched, the catalyst and healing agent combine and repair the damage.

Now this is cool.

Full Story: New polymer coatings prevent corrosion, even when scratched

E-Week is a week when the magnificence of Engineering is celebrated. There are free t-shirts, cheap lunches, video game tournaments, movie nights, free bagels, and more.

Check out the events at http://eweek.ec.uiuc.edu

Reflections|Projections is a conference put on by ACM each year. This year it is this weekend, October 12-14. It’s a great conference, with food, great speakers, free shirts, and more! Some key information:

Yes, they do give out free t-shirts. In the past, participants have had to register to get a free shirt, but as I understand it, this year they will be simply giving them out to all participants who show up at the conference. (from their website: “The entire conference is free of charge, and in thanks for your presence or participation at any event, we’ll hand you a free T-shirt.”)

One of the notable speakers is Randall Munroe, the internet humorist responsible for xkcd. He is speaking at 7:45 pm on Friday in 1404 Siebel Center. Also, Eric Traut will speak on Saturday at 1:30 about virtualization. See the full schedule for more information.

They put video recordings of all of the presentations on the web. This is a great resource if there is a speaker that you really want to see, but couldn’t make his or her presentation.

Other interesting things: R|P Job Fair, MechMania, Yahoo! Hack Day, PuzzleCrack

Everyone, including non-Computer Science majors, should stop by. It’s a great experience.

This week is Engineering Expo. This is the engineering career fair planned and organized entirely by the EC Expo Committee. Every year there is a great turn out of companies, and many students get jobs and internships.

If you have not yet stopped by, it will conclude tomorrow – Wednesday, September 12. The hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. All majors are welcome, just make sure to bring your I-Card to be admitted.